


Landslide

by JHSC



Series: The Ultimate Kidfic of Ultimate Destiny [1]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Abandonment, Adoption, Aftermath of Violence, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Canon-Typical Violence, Deaf Clint Barton, Depression, Discussion of Consent Issues, F/M, Family Issues, Foster Care, Gratuitous film references, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Racism, SHIELD Academy, Self-Esteem Issues, Sexism, Slow Burn, Teen Pregnancy, aka The Ultimate Kidfic of Ultimate Destiny, unprotected sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-16
Updated: 2016-09-10
Packaged: 2018-05-01 21:15:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 91,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5221097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JHSC/pseuds/JHSC
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint is seventeen. He has a girlfriend, a baby on the way, and a headlining act in the circus.</p>
<p>Then, he doesn’t.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> _Well, I've been afraid of changing_  
>  _'Cause I've built my life around you_  
>  _But time makes you bolder_  
>  _Even children get older_  
>  _And I'm getting older, too..._  
>  \- Fleetwood Mac
> 
> Update: If you are here on a **re-read** , might I recommend following along with the [Landslide Reference Guide](http://bit.ly/2gXHF6b) for behind-the-scenes commentary, references, and insights, like why Dustin is named Dustin and whether Phil is right about bull sharks? (Spoilers abound, so if this is your first time here, I'd say skip it for now). :-D 

*

_Friday, July 1, 1988_

*

Clint wakes up.

The first thing he notices is the sky. It’s a clear night, with no moon and no city lights to invade the darkness. He can see the band of the Milky Way stretched across the sky. He thinks it’s beautiful.

It’s quiet out here, wherever he is. Any sounds are muffled and far away. Peaceful.

He notices it’s cold, unusually so for a night in June.

He closes his eyes.

*

Clint wakes up.

The starlit canopy is gone, replaced by grey tile and too many lights. Dark silhouettes come into focus above him – faces, lips moving, brows drawn. The world is still muffled, like there are cotton balls filling his ears. He lifts a hand to rub at his ear and finds that he can’t move it, something’s holding it down. He finally registers the throbbing that permeates his entire body, the sharp pains in his chest and in his legs. He isn’t cold anymore.

He closes his eyes and makes it all go away.

*

It’s the third time he wakes up that Clint realizes something is wrong. His first problem is that he’s obviously in a hospital – there are bright lights, green curtains, machines. He shouldn’t be in a hospital. The last time a performer had been sent to the ER and admitted, Carson had packed up the circus and headed out of town, leaving him there to fend for himself.

A man steps into his field of vision, and Clint flinches at the sudden movement. The man holds his hands up, palms out, in a calming gesture. His mouth moves, but it’s like trying to listen to the neighbor’s television through the wall – he knows there’s a distant sound, but can’t make out the words. That’s the second thing he notices.

The third is that there’s a tube in his throat, and he’s surrounded by wires, and now he’s breathing hard – too hard – he’s choking – the world starts to spin –

*

The next time Clint remembers waking up, the pain in his body is louder, but the tube is gone and he can breathe on his own. He takes a deep breath, just to try it out, and coughs when the air irritates his throat. His whole body throbs, but in a distant kind of way. He can’t really make sense of his thoughts, or get his mind to focus on anything. He floats.

The back of the bed suddenly starts to rise, and he’s overwhelmed with a wave of dizziness. He opens his eyes in an effort to stem the tide and center himself. A tall, middle-aged black woman in pink hospital scrubs is standing next to his bed, the remote in her hand bringing him slowly up to a semi-reclined position. Her hair is straightened and pulled back into a tight bun, and her cheeks are sprinkled with dark freckles. She catches his eye and smiles at him brightly. She holds her index finger up in an obvious “wait one second” gesture and walks away.

She returns with a small orange juice carton, which she opens. She adds a bendy straw and holds it up to his mouth to drink. It’s the best orange juice he’s ever tasted in his life. He manages a few long draws before she pulls it away, and he feels himself whine at the loss.

She speaks, moving her lips expressively.

“[Slow], so [---] [d—nt] [choke].” she says, shooting him another radiant smile. He smiles tentatively back.

A tall white man in blue scrubs walks up to the bed then, and Clint flinches. Everything in his head is muddled. The man – a doctor, probably (doctors are expensive) – speaks to the nurse for a moment, then turns to Clint and smiles. Clint doesn’t smile back.

The doctor writes something on his clipboard and then turns it around to show Clint. The words swim on the page; the effort to read leaves Clint retching up the orange juice into a small dish the nurse places under his chin just in time. The doctor pulls the clipboard away and says something to the nurse, looking serious. Then his vision starts to blur, and he panics a moment at the fact that he’s falling asleep yet again – how long has he been here? – and then he’s out.

*

Clint doesn’t know what’s wrong with him. He can’t focus enough to figure out where the pain is coming from – just that it’s there, horribly present. There are wires and tubes in his arms and chest, and he can’t move beyond slight shifts of his weight against the bed. Every time he wakes up, he can’t remember if it’s the first time or the fifteenth, he’s so muddled.

He doesn’t ask the medical staff if he’s going to be okay. In his experience, nothing ever is.

*

Clint loses time in the hospital, the first few weeks hazy and disjointed. He barely remembers two surgeries – one, he eventually learns, to repair a gunshot wound to his upper chest, the other to fill his leg with pins. It’s a long time, he thinks, before he’s able to keep his focus, to remember what happened a few minutes ago, to keep food down before sudden nausea makes him bring it all back up again.

Slowly, he learns that the nurse he first met, the one with the deep umber skin and smile that he can’t help but return every time, is named Jessie. He learns that he’s in intensive care. He learns that the reason the world keeps spinning away from him – the reason his ears seem to be broken – is because of a major concussion.

He learns that no one’s been to visit him. The rock he found in his gut when he first woke up is getting slowly heavier as time passes.

*

(When Clint was seven years old, his father boxed his ears hard enough to rupture both eardrums.

The following six months – until his ears finally started to heal – had been a study in frustration, trying to communicate with a world he could no longer understand. Once a week, the school’s speech pathologist would pull him and Barney out of class to go over simple sign language. Barney loved it, and for six months, Clint’s older brother translated his wants and needs to the rest of the world.

Now, ten years later, Barney isn’t here, and Clint is on his own.)

*

The doctors fit him with hearing aids sooner rather than later. He still can’t get up from the bed, but they’ve switched out the horrible catheter for a bedpan, to his eternal relief. The splint on his left wrist makes it impossible to write or sign, and the lingering concussion makes it difficult to read. So in go the new aids, and along comes the police detective to ask him questions.

“No, I don’t know what happened.”

“No, I don’t know who shot me.”

“No, I don’t know why I was in that part of town.”

He remembers performing the Thursday night show, but not the Friday one. He was shot and, evidently, thrown down a concrete stairwell late Friday night. His last fuzzy memory is of Jackie, hand on her eight-months-pregnant belly, telling him his costume needed a wash because it smelled like a teenage boy. He remembers nuzzling her neck and telling her she smelled like sunshine and billy goat. He’d danced out the door, laughing as she chucked peanuts at his head.

It was a good memory. But not what the police were looking for, and not one he was about to give them.

*

That afternoon, after he’s tried to feed himself a small cup of Jell-O with his one functional hand, only to set it aside after two bites, a woman in regular clothes, not scrubs, comes to stand by his bed. She waves, and signs, Hello, as she says it aloud. Clint frowns, and reaches for his new hearing aid case. The doctors had recommended he ease into using them, so he’d taken them out immediately after the police officer left.

Once he has the aids turned on and awkwardly situated in his ears, the receiver hooked to the front of his hospital gown, the woman continues, “Hi, Clint. My [na--] [--] Grace Munoz. I[’m] [w--] Child Protective Services.”

Clint feels his stomach drop, and suddenly he can’t breathe, and his head is spinning, and he’s scrambling backwards, pulling out wires, falling out of the bed, and he lands and his world explodes in pain. Hands are on his body and he curls in on himself, hiding his stomach and covering his head with his hands, hoping that this time it will be over soon. It already hurts so much, it must be almost over, it has to be—

He loses some time. He’s so, so tired of that. When he comes back to himself, he find he’s been returned to his bed, although the covers only go as far as his waist. His IV has been replaced and is flowing with something warm that makes the world feel slightly out of focus. Jessie is there, replacing the bandage over the stitches on his chest, and he doesn’t care as much as he should about the tray next to her, holding blood-soaked gauze.

“I—[okay], Cl---” Jessie says. He’s gotten used to hearing that phrase and reading it on people’s lips; everyone says it, and everyone lies. Jessie puts his hearing aids back in – when did he lose them? – and then raises the head of the bed again. She stands at his side, hand on his shoulder, as the daytime doctor approaches his bed, the CPS worker alongside. Clint’s stomach barely jolts through the sedative.

The doctor smiles. “It’s okay.”

(Clint is so tired of okay.)

“Try – [stay] calm,” the doctor continues. “You ripped [-- --] [your] stitches [ou--]. If you [wa--] [--] get [out of] bed, just [--].”

He turns and walks away, and Grace sits down in the visitor’s chair with an air of making herself at home. Clint reaches up to adjust his hearing aids; putting them in right is the one thing Jessie isn’t terribly good at.

“I’m sorry I upset you,” Grace says when he’s obviously done and can’t stall anymore.

“It’s fine.”

“Does that happen a lot, where you get upset like [that]?” she asks, and Clint knows how this goes, and he knows how dangerous it is to answer a questions like that honestly.

“No,” Clint lies.

“The doctor gave you a medicine called [Ativan]. Have you ever had it before?”

“Never had anything before,” Clint lies.

“Okay,” she says. “Well, I’m sorry I upset you. I’d like to talk [--] [little bit], if that’s okay.”

She looks at him expectantly. He doesn’t know what to say to that, so he nods instead.

“Do you remember what happened to you?”

“I already told the cop everything,” he replies. “I don’t know what happened.”

“It’s okay, Clint. You’re not [gonna] get in trouble for telling me what happened the night you [were hurt].” He stares at her, annoyed, and she continues, “Were you with someone? Were you with your brother?”

He huffs, “I don’t know what happened or who I was with, but I know if my brother was there he wouldn’t have left me to get picked up by the—I don’t know what happened and I’m tired of telling people that.”

“Okay, then we won’t talk about that,” Grace replies easily. “Can you tell me what you’ve been doing the last [--] [years]?”

Clint narrows his eyes, suspicious of the topic change. “Why do you want to know?”

“I spoke to the Iowa office, and  they haven’t had you in their system since 1981, when you and your brother both disappeared from your last foster home.” Clint flinches, and he knows she sees it, but he can’t help himself. “Where did you go after that?”

“We went and stayed with some people. On a farm, out in Missouri. We, um. We did chores. On the farm.” He recites the story Barney had drilled into him forever ago, in case he got picked up while he was underage. Protect Carson, don’t lead them back to the circus, spin a story and stick with it. Then, while they’re checking the facts, you run.

“Can you tell me the names of the people you stayed with?” Grace asks, her pen poised to write every piece of his story down, and his mind goes blank.

“I don’t remember. It was a long time ago. They were nice.”

“That’s great. I’m so glad. How long do you think you stayed with them?”

“A couple months. Then we left and went to another farm that needed help.”

She lowers the pen. That must be a good sign. “Needed help doing chores?”

He nods, “Yeah.”

She cups her elbow in one hand; the other goes to curl in front of her mouth. “How [lo--] [sta--]?”

“What?” Clint asks, feeling stupid.

“Sorry,” she says, pulling her hand down from her face. “How long did you stay on that farm?”

“I don’t know. We stayed a lot of places. Lots of work to get done on a farm.”

She nods. “Yes, there is. So what happened when you were ten that made you want to run away to work on farms?”

“You know we ran away,” he responds immediately. “Why does it matter why we left or where we went? They were bad. I don’t want to go back.”

His breath hitches, and the drugs they gave him must be wearing off because the knot in his throat is back and he can barely breathe around it. “Please don’t make me go back.”

“It’s okay, Clint,” she says aloud.

Clint clenches his free fist, as much as he can, and pounds it on the mattress next to his hip. “No! No, it’s not okay! Everyone keeps saying that but it’s not!”

“Clint!”

“Shut up! I don’t want to hear it! I don’t want to – they left me – I need to find – I need to get out of here and find her but you won’t let me and I can’t – ”

He tries to turn away from her, so that he doesn’t have to look at her fake sympathetic face. She probably deals with hysterical runaways every day of the week, sending them back into the system where anyone can hurt them and they can’t get away. She’s probably done it already twice today, and he’s just another kid to be shuffled down the line and locked away.

He’s not a kid. He hasn’t been for a very long time.

There’s a flush of warmth through the IV line, and then Jessie’s hand squeezes his shoulder before he can move more than an inch or two on the bed. He’d forgotten she was there. He looks up at her. “Don’t smile at me. I don’t want to smile.”

Jessie draws her lips down into an exaggerated frown, but her brown eyes are crinkled at the corners, and it’s close enough to her usual smile that he feels himself calming down at the sight, buoyed along by the IV. He turns back to Grace, and looks down at her clipboard to avoid meeting her eyes.

“Sorry,” he says.

“I’m sorry, too,” she says. “I am going to help you, I promise.”

Clint snorts, but doesn’t correct her.

*

As soon as Grace leaves, Clint manages to wrangle Jessie into writing a letter for him. It’s the first of August, which means that if the circus sticks to its schedule, they’ll arrive in St. Louis in a couple of days. Carson keeps a post office box there.

The note Clint dictates is short: Tell Barney to come get me, and lists the address of the hospital. Jessie promises to mail it first thing, and then Clint just has to wait, and hope.

Barney may not like him anymore, Barney may outright loathe Jackie and think Clint is a damn idiot for keeping Bailey. But one thing Barney absolutely won’t do is abandon Clint to the system.

*

_Saturday, August 13, 1988_

*

Clint’s in a doze, idly watching the medical staff bustle about the ward, when a familiar figure with red hair steps up to the foot of the bed. His face is drawn and his hands are clenched and shaking. Clint turns his head to face him and struggles to focus. When he sees Clint move he says something – Clint can’t catch it – and starts backing away, shaking his head. He turns, and Clint knows he’s leaving.

“Barney, wait!” He knows that it comes out too loud, too nasal, even though he can’t hear it.

Barney’s head whips back around, and the dazed expression on his face is replaced with one that is laser-sharp. He stalks forward till he’s standing next to the head of the bed.

“Can [---] [hear me]?” he asks aloud, and Clint shakes his head.

“Deaf?” Barney signs.

Clint nods, and reaches over to the side table that holds his new hearing aids. Barney gets to the case first and passes it to him, hands unusually gentle. It takes a few fumbling minutes for Clint to put the batteries in, to get the ear mold placed properly, to adjust the volume, and every extra moment is filled with the fear that Barney will turn and go where Clint can’t follow.

Finally, the noise of the hospital is back, and Clint concentrates on ignoring the echoing footsteps, beeping and whooshing machines, chattering voices, and every other distracting sound that reaches his ears.

“Is it permanent?” is Barney’s first question.

“They think so,” Clint replies. “Really bad concussion. Barney, where have you been?”

“You don’t remember what happened?” Clint shakes his head, and Barney takes a deep breath. “I thought you were dead.”

“What? Why?”

Barney’s eyes flicker, and Clint can see guilt pass across his face before he clamps down on it, hard. He sits down, finally, in the visitor’s chair, and clasps his hands in front of him tightly. “You really don’t remember anything about – anything?”

“No, Barney, as far as I know, I went to bed in June and woke up in August and no one was here. Tell me.”

Barney wipes a hand down his face and mutters, “Christ. You…”

He huffs, glances around as if to make sure they won’t be overheard. “The night you were… hurt. Trickshot and I had some plans in town. You found out about it and followed us. I tried to send you back, but you wouldn’t go, and Trick…”

Barney’s breath catches. “Trick shot you, and you fell… down the stairs… and I looked and you were at the bottom and you weren’t moving and there were police sirens…”

He coughs, turns his head away to rub at his nose roughly. A few tense seconds pass, and then he faces Clint again and continues, “Trick ran off. I went back to Carson’s and told him what happened. He didn’t want any trouble so we packed it up and left town. Then, two days ago we got your note, and so here I am.”

It’s been weeks, Clint realizes, and while Clint’s been worrying and waiting, Barney’s been grieving that whole time. Everyone has, including – “Why didn’t Jackie come, too?”

Flopping back in his chair, Barney snaps, “Of course that’s your first question. Jackie.”

“Bailey was due in July and now it’s August, of course Jackie is my first question. Is she okay? Are they okay?”

He shifts in his chair. “She’s fine.”

“She’s fine?” Clint asks. “What about the baby, did she have the baby? Is Bailey okay?”

“They’re both fine. She had the baby while we were on the road. She, uh.”

“She what?”

“You’re not gonna like it.”

“I swear to Christ, Barney—“

“She left. She gave the baby up. To the state. And then she left. Said she was going to move in with her cousin.”

“She…What? Why?”

“You were dead, what was she supposed to do?”

“Why didn’t you stop her?”

Barney rolls his eyes. “Yeah, like anyone can stop Jackie when she sets her mind to something.”

Clint ignores the jab, because it’s true and not the point. “But you could have helped—”

“What, helped with the baby? What the hell was I gonna do with a baby? What the hell were you gonna do with a baby in the fucking circus, anyway?”

Clint feels the frustration of a thousand arguments that began just like this, starting from the moment they found out about Jackie’s pregnancy and decided yes, they could do this. Barney had called them both morons. “I’d’ve taken care of it, you know I could, I’ve told you I could, why didn’t you –”

“You. Were. Dead.” Barney growls. “We were all a little distracted at the time.”

“I’m not dead, I’m…” He doesn’t say okay. “I’m not dead. I want to go home.”

“To the circus?” Barney asks. “Really?”

“That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? To take me home?”

Barney stares at him, then drags his eyes down Clint’s body, mapping out the IV ports, the tubes, the contraption holding his leg together. He steels his face, nods to himself, and Clint feels his stomach drop when Barney says, “No.”

“They said they’re going to put me back into the system if I stay here!” He sees Barney flinch. “I need to go home, find Jackie and Bailey, you gotta get me out of here!”

“You can’t come back like this, Clint, you need – you can’t do anything, Carson’s already replaced your act. There isn’t a place for you anymore.”

“But—”

“But nothing. What are you going to do, shoot from a hospital bed?” His voice gets louder. “You’re fucking useless like this, and you let them get a tag on you, you’ll bring nothing but trouble to Carson and to all of us if you try and come back. You’re not coming with me.”

“I don’t want to stay here!” Clint shouts.

“Too fucking bad,” Barney shouts back. “I’m your brother and you’ll do like I tell you. You’re staying right where you are, and if I catch you trying to come back, I will end you.”

It’s an empty threat that Barney’s used a thousand times before, but this time his face goes from red to white in an instant, and then he’s standing from the chair and striding towards the doors.

“Barney!”

He’s gone.

*

_Monday, August 29, 1988_

*

Clint sleeps a lot, after Barney leaves. Then one afternoon, he wakes up, and Grace is there with a middle-aged white couple – a tiny woman with freckles and a solid grey ponytail, and a barrel-chested man who reminds Clint vividly of the Strong Man at the circus. He swallows down a flash of anxiety.

“This is Chris and Sue Drenik,” Grace says, once he’s fumbled the hearing aids in and adjusted the volume; they’re standing close enough to the bed that he won’t have to turn it too far up in order to hear them over the rest of the sounds in the ward.

“Hi, Clint,” they each say in turn. Clint stares at them and doesn’t respond.

“Normally with someone your age, we’d be sending you to a group home,” Grace begins. Clint stiffens. “It’s okay, Clint. You’re not going to the group home. You’re still going to need more care after you leave the hospital, which is why we’re sending you home with Chris and Sue.”

“Why can’t I just stay here, then, if I need all this ‘care?’” Clint asks.

“Going home is the next step in your recovery. Your doctor says that your injuries are healing as they should, but it’s going to take a lot of time and care. The Dreniks will be there to get you to your appointments, to help you take care of yourself, and to give you more attention than you’ve been getting here.”

Clint thinks of Jessie’s pink Eeyore scrubs and non-threatening demeanor, and compares her against Sue’s short stature and Chris’s broad chest. “I’d rather stay with Jessie,” he says.

“Jessie can’t take you home with her, and she can’t give you the attention Chris and Sue can.”

“I don’t want their attention,” he snaps. That’s when Clint sees Chris shift his weight to the right. It’s the most minor of movements, but it still has Clint flinching to the left. His whole body feels tight, and he would already be up and out of the room if he weren’t pinned in place on the hospital bed, casts and braces and all.

Chris must see the flinch, because he immediately stills. Then he eases a step backwards, lowering his head slightly and curling his shoulders inward. He’s trying to make himself look harmless. Clint knows what he’s doing, and he isn’t fooled.

Grace keeps talking, but Clint zones out to the sound of her voice and doesn’t answer when she says they’ll be by in the morning to pick him up.

*

Chris lifts him four times the next day. First, from the hospital bed into a wheelchair. Then from the chair to the backseat of the Dreniks’ van. Then out of the van and back into the chair. And then, one final time, from the chair to the living room sofa.

“Once you get some of your strength back, you’ll be able to maneuver yourself in and out as you need to,” Sue says, stuffing a pillow behind him to prop him up as he sips from a mug of tomato soup. Clint is exhausted just from the trip and feels himself falling asleep, the mug dropping precariously. As his eyes close, someone takes it out of his hand, and he reaches for it blindly. His hand falls.

He wakes up screaming sometime later, dry heaving over the side of the couch. There are hands on him, but no sound, and it’s dark and everything smells wrong. He calls out for Jackie. A light comes on, but it’s Sue’s pale face he sees, her freckles stark against her white skin. She’s signing and talking at him. He closes his eyes and turns away.

*

When Clint graduates to crutches, the first time he’s left home alone he uses them to maneuver around the first floor of the house. He manages to stash some canned fruit and a jar of peanut butter under the bed in the tiny guest bedroom where he’s been staying. A few granola bars and bag of raisins are distributed between the bedroom closet, the hall closet, and the bathroom.

He can’t make any preparations on the second floor yet. He’s hoping that they won’t bother dragging him upstairs.

Making his way back to the couch, leg aching just from that minor bit of activity, Clint’s eye catches on the stack of mail on the console table. Specifically, the phone book. He grabs it and takes a seat on the couch closest to the telephone. He opens it to the “H” section of the yellow pages, flips the telephone switch on his hearing aid receiver, and starts dialing before he can think twice about it.

“Hi? Um. I’m trying to find someone, to find out if someone had a baby there back in July. Yeah, I’ll hold.”

*

_Sunday, January 22, 1989_

*

He never winds up needing any of the food. That doesn’t mean anything. He switches out the stashes as they expire, and the Dreniks never say anything.

It’s Grace, though, who tells him about the phone bills.

It’s during one of her home visits, when she just shows up at the drop of a hat without telling anyone beforehand. Clint is in his room, staring at the ceiling, when she flickers the light to get his attention and announce her presence. He gets his aids in, and proceeds to quietly panic until Grace says, “It’s not the phone bill we’re concerned about. Why have you been calling hospitals all over three states?”

“I’m looking for someone… who was a patient.”

Grace frowns. “Hospitals aren’t legally allowed to give out information about their patients.”

“Yeah,” Clint agrees, slumped. “I figured that out.”

“Who are you looking for?”

Clint shrugs.

“Is this related to how you were hurt?”

He shakes his head. “No.”

Grace’s tone turns earnest. “Someone shot you, Clint, and left you for dead on the concrete. If you’re protecting—“

He shakes his head again, more emphatically this time, because no one should ever equate Jackie with that terrible night on the first of July. “I’m not—she’s got nothing to do with that.”

“She?”

Caught out, Clint doesn’t answer.

“Are you looking for someone?”

He shrugs again.

“You know I’m here to help you. If there’s someone you need to find, I can help you find them. But that means you need to tell me.”

Clint takes a deep breath and blows it out audibly. Trust Grace, or no? She’s part of the system, yes, but… she’s also part of the system. After a long moment, he makes his decision, and admits, “It’s… my girlfriend.”

Grace doesn’t seem to realize what she’s just been gifted with - just plows on with the questions as she always does. “Okay. Why are you looking for her at hospitals? Was she hurt that night, too?”

A short laugh escapes him before he can stop it. “If she was there, you would’a caught her. She was eight months pregnant with our kid. She gave birth afterward.”

“Is this something your visitor on August 13th told you?”

“How did—“

“He signed in at the front desk, Clint,” she responds with a raised eyebrow. “Give us some credit.”

The words, the explanations, are so hard to pull out - but he knows he has to tell the whole story if Grace is going to help. And at this point, Grace won’t let go until she hears it all.

“He said… he said she gave the baby up to the state. So, you know, I figured I’d start at the hospital and… take it from there.”

“So you want to find the baby and claim paternity?”

“Of course,” he says, immediately. How could he want anything else?

Grace smiles, and her eyes glow with it for a moment. She nods, and pulls out pad of paper. “Okay. Let me take down some information and we’ll see what I can find out, okay?”

He nods. “Okay.”

“What’s your girlfriend’s full name?”

“Jacqueline Higgins.”

Grace writes it down, and shows it to him to make sure she got the spelling right. Clint has no idea if she got the spelling right. She continues, “Date of birth?”

This one, Clint knows. “October 24th, 1972.”

“Place of birth?”

“Cairo,” he says. When she raises her eyebrow, he adds, “The one in Georgia.”

“Parents’ names?”

“I don’t know. She’s… She’s a runaway, like us.”

“Okay,” Grace nods, making another note in her notebook. “Race?”

“Black,” he answers, and braces himself for yet another comment, another dig, another stare of disbelief, another person telling them they’re doing something wrong-

“Okay,” Grace says, breezing right on past Clint’s anxieties. “Can you give me a description?”

Clint takes a moment to catch up - because when has anyone from Pittsburgh to Birmingham ever not made a comment? - and then says, “Um. She’s about an inch taller than me. Natural hair, she cut it really short a couple months ago because of, you know, she got tired of dealing with it, ‘cuz she was so tired. Her skin’s kind of this - deep brown, and her eyes are this really - this really pretty golden brown, you know?”

“She sounds very pretty,” Grace says.

Clint smiles, hesitantly. Jackie is the prettiest girl he’s ever met.

“Do you know when she gave birth?”

“I don’t know exactly when. Sometime between when I got shot and when I got that visit. You gotta—you gotta find them, I’ve been in the system, I know what happens to mixed kids, I know—“

“Okay, Clint,” Grace says, raising her hand to quiet him. “I know. Let’s keep going, okay? Boy or girl?”

“I… I don’t know. He didn’t say.”

“Okay.” She puts her paper down. “Honesty time.”

“You’re not gonna let me have them if you find them, are you?”

“It’s not so simple as that. As the father, you legally have 30 days after birth to claim paternity for a child. After 30 days, you lose that right.”

Clint feels like he’s been punched in the stomach, like he’s going to throw up, like he can’t ever take another breath again.

“But because of your special circumstances, we may be able to challenge that in court. The other issue is—“

He cottons on before she can finish. “—I’m seventeen and disabled and stuck in a foster home, myself?”

Grace nods.

“What do I do?”

“For now, be patient. I’ll make some inquiries and start the paperwork. You concentrate on getting better, okay?”

*

Grace calls him in a month and tells him to be patient. She calls a month later and urges more patience. At the third month, she calls a final time and tells him there’s nothing more she can do. Jackie could have had the baby in three different states depending on the delivery date – if she hadn’t moved even further afield. And even if they found the baby, at this point half those states wouldn’t let him have it – by now, the delay has just been too long.

“So what can I do?” Clint asks, voice cracking. “What’s left?”

“If you can get into contact with Jackie, she’ll be able to tell you where she had the baby and what happened to him. Beyond that, though… you can put your name and information into the state adoption registries and hope a match comes up. I can mail you the forms for Ohio. You’ll have to write to the offices in Indiana and Illinois and have them forward you their forms as well.”

Clint sits in silence for a moment.

“I am sorry, Clint. But this might end up being for the best, for both of you.”

*

_Sunday, June 18, 1989_

*

The day Clint turns eighteen, the Dreniks buy him dinner, then move him out of their spare room and into a rented room in a house shared by four other young men, all in their early twenties. With his leg fully healed, he starts working in the stockroom at Hill’s Department Store. The work is physical and tedious, but it doesn’t require a diploma, and it doesn’t require him to be able to understand customers who talk too fast, mumble, or cover their mouths – and who, when they see his hearing aids and the receiver clipped to his collar, revert to talking to him like he’s four years old.

He starts growing his hair out and combs it to cover his ears, and sticks the receiver inside his shirt. It can’t pick up sounds as well that way, but…. he doesn’t really want to talk to anyone, anyway.

It’s a life. It’s not what he thought he’d be doing a year ago – but then, maybe headlining in a circus wasn’t exactly the best career plan he could have come up with. Clint learns that wages are supposed to be paid regularly, that taxes get taken out of them, and that the company has to pay for it if he’s injured on the job. Clint works, pays his rent, and waits for the state to call him back.

*

_Saturday, August 12, 1989_

*

Clint’s roommates throw a party one weekend, celebrating a birthday or a holiday or some important occasion, Clint can’t really tell, but whatever it is, it’s due cause for a celebration that takes up the entirety of their apartment. The music is loud, which means he ends up taking his hearing aids out early on, since they’re useless in all the noise and he doesn’t want people staring at them. Surrounded by unfamiliar, older faces, Clint retreats to a corner with his beer and watches.

That lasts barely an hour until Jason runs up and grabs him by the arm. Clint flinches, and Jason steps back, starts waving for Clint to come with him. With nothing else to do, Clint goes.

He follows Jason into the kitchen, where the table has been emptied of food, drinks, and trash, and moved into the center of the room. On both ends of the table, eight plastic cups have been arranged into a triangle. Clint figures it must be a game of some kind. Jason pulls a ping pong ball out of his pocket and, with gestures and a quick demonstration, explains the rules to Clint.

His roommates must have noticed his aim, then. Oh well. There are worse things to do at a party. Clint takes the ball, and starts the game.

*

Clint is drunk, and there’s a woman hanging off him. He doesn’t know where she came from, other than somewhere around when he finished winning at beer pong and then got dragged around to the backyard to win at horseshoes. He can’t tell if she’s the prize he got for winning – or if he’s the one who’s the trophy.

Jason has wandered off, from what Clint can tell, to find a dartboard, and the rest of the group is slapping him on the back. Clint is buzzing, and the life of the party, apparently, and for the last two hours no one has batted an eyelash about him being deaf and incapable of understanding them amidst the noise and the music. They just pass him drinks and watch him play.

It’s nice. It’s something he hasn’t realized he missed – the camaraderie of the circus performers and the all-around elation everyone shared after a good performance for a packed crowd. For the last few months of his time in the circus, when he had Jackie there with him and Bailey on the way, that was when everything in his life felt most… right. No matter what else was going on in the dark corners of his life, he had that.

Now, though, it isn’t Jackie at his side, ribbing him for missing the center of a target by half an inch. It’s a woman with mousy brown hair and flushed pink skin, wearing an oversized plaid shirt and a lace choker necklace. She hands him another shot and whispers god-knows-what in his ear as he swallows it down. Without his aids in and with her face hidden, he can’t even begin to tell. He turns to face her and says, “I can’t hear you.”

She smirks a bit and says, “I [want] [--] [to you] [----ere] [--one].”

When she tugs on his hand, he gets unsteadily to his feet and follows her as she leads him through the living room and towards the back hallway. A glance back shows his housemate Eric grinning and giving him a thumbs-up.

The woman pulls him into Eric’s bedroom and closes the door, and what noise Clint could hear is cut off. She walks toward him, saying something. Clint know what he should do – point to his ears, say _I’m deaf_ in the wrong tone at the wrong volume, watch her mouth twist down in a frown and watch her turn to leave – but then she’s kissing him.

He knows it isn’t a good kiss. He’s done this before, sober, when the room isn’t spinning and his lips aren’t numb from alcohol. She pushes him to sit on the side of the bed and straddles him, which is about when his cock starts to get sensitive, starts to fill and distract him from his thoughts.

That last shot must kick in, then, because Clint loses time as hands and lips go places and clothes come off – first her plaid button-up, and the tank top beneath it. The choker necklace stays. Clint presses his face between her breasts and takes a deep breath of the soft skin he finds there, nuzzling into it gently. He could stay there all day. Then her bras falls away and she stands up to shimmy out of her torn jeans.

She pulls him close again and kisses him, takes his hand and guides it between her legs to press on the sensitive spot there. This, he knows how to do. Her hips jerk in response, and he takes over, pressing and rubbing, ducking his head down to pull a nipple into his mouth and suck, and she shudders. He kisses back up to her neck, finds another sensitive spot just above her collarbone and alternates teasing it with his teeth and his tongue. She’s so wet now, it’s easy to slide a finger inside of her, to grind the heel of his hand onto her clit as he strokes, then she’s grabbing his face between her hands and kissing him hard as she comes.

He smiles into her mouth and she grins back, then pushes him backwards to lie flat on the bed. He closes his eyes as the room suddenly tilts and spins wildly. He realizes his jeans are gone, and she’s climbing up next to him, wrapping her hand around his cock and giving it a firm pull.

Okay. This is good. He remembers this. Jackie would always—

The bed shifts, and he feels Jackie straddling him, and now he feels a pressure against the head of his cock, and now she’s sinking down on him, all hot, wet tightness. He gasps and jerks and she comes all the way down till she’s resting on his hips.

Then she lifts up again, and lowers back down, and does it again, and starts up a slow rhythm. Clint cups her breasts in his hands and squeezes them the way Jackie always likes, and her hips stutter in their rhythm. Finally, he opens his eyes again and realizes that everything is wrong – her breasts are too small, and her skin is too pale, and her hair is too long. He looks up at her face and realizes she’s not Jackie.

That’s when his brain wakes up enough to realize that there is no condom, and he doesn’t know who this woman is, and what kind of person does that make him—?

The woman stops rocking. His cock has suddenly gone soft, and he feels it slip out of her.

“[Are you okay]?” she asks.

“I don’t know,” he tries to say, but his lips are numb and his tongue won’t form the words.

She crawls backwards down his body to rest between  his legs, and takes his cock into her mouth. She sucks him back to hardness, and despite the voice at the back of his head telling him he’s wrong, wrong, wrong, he doesn’t try to stop her, and it’s only a few minutes before he’s coming in her mouth.

He feels like he’s going to cry. He’s never-- He’s only ever-- with Jackie but Jackie is _gone_  and there’s a stranger here in bed with him whose name he doesn’t know, and what would Jackie say?

He sits up and pulls his jeans up over the mess on his groin, pulls his t-shirt back on over his head. He knows she’s talking again, but he doesn’t look at her to find out what she’s saying. Tugging his shirt down, he heads to the door.  He turns to check that she’s dressed, then walks out, heads back to the kitchen, and does shots of tequila with Jason until he passes out.

*

Late the next morning, Clint wakes up to a terrible hangover and the smirks of his roommates. They pass him a sheet of paper. Eric’s handwriting says, “Next time, fuck in your own bedroom.”

Below it are seven digits, and Jason’s writing: “Allison left her phone number.”

Clint glances at Jason’s face, which shows nothing but utter amusement. Clint takes his cereal into his room to eat, and tries not to think about how he used to wake up in the morning with his head pillowed on Jackie’s breasts, and for those last few months, with his hand resting on her stomach, waiting to feel Bailey kick.

*

Monday morning, Clint’s large, stupidly obnoxious alarm buzzes him awake at 5:15. He slams the snooze button twice before grabbing the clock, ripping the four D batteries out of the back, chucking them at the wall, and dropping the clock on the floor next to his bed.

Eric sticks his head in the door a few minutes later, says, “Hey! [--] [going] [--] [--] [bus]?”

He taps his wristwatch and looks at him expectantly. Clint waves him off, rolls over, and goes back to sleep.

When he gets to work Tuesday morning, his manager takes him into a quiet office at the back of the building, waits for Clint to adjust his receiver, and then proceeds to rip him a new one for pulling a “no-call, no-show.”

Clint stares at his feet. Part of him had thought maybe Eric had said something when he came into work yesterday. Part of him is pissed because no one told him the rules; no one told him what a no-call no-show is, why it’s apparently so bad, and when happens when you pull one.

Most of him, though, just wants to go back to bed.

*

_Saturday, October 21, 1989_

*

The first day Clint’s wallet has money left in it after paying all his bills, he buys a cheap fiberglass bow and ten arrows from the sporting goods store and gets directions to the nearest rod and gun club. It takes him an hour and two bus transfers to get there – not to mention the odd looks of his fellow passengers at the bow propped against his legs – but it’s all worth it when he walks up the path and sees the targets in the archery field.

Clint combs his hair down over his ears and walks through the door and up to the desk. A man in his mid-twenties, with brown hair and sharp cheekbones, looks up from his magazine and gives him a grin. “Hey kid, what’s up?”

Clint tamps down a sudden burst of nerves and asks, “Is this where I get a membership?”

The man glances up and down at him and responds, “You over eighteen?”

“Yes.”

“Then this is where you get a membership. What’re you shooting?”

Clint raises his new bow from where he’d been holding – not hiding! – it down below the counter. The man’s eyebrows shoot up, and Clint says, defensively, “The guy at the store said I’d get arrested if I shot it inside the city limits, so…”

“Yeah, getting arrested’s a bitch,” the man replies, rummaging through a stack of forms on the desk. “Got an ID?”

Clint passes over the non-driver’s ID they’d issued him when he turned eighteen.

“Nice to meetcha, Clint,” the man says, glancing at the ID and winking. “I’m Seth.”

Clint fights down a blush and the urge to tuck his hair behind his ears.

Seth helps him fill out the proper forms, gives him a tour of the grounds and a rundown of the rules, and then sets him up out in the field with a target placed at what Clint considers a hilariously close distance.

Clint raises a bow for the first time in a year…

…he shoots.

And the rest of the world – the store, the parties, the silence – goes away.

*

The next time there’s a party, Clint drinks until he throws up, and is deposited in his room to sleep it off before the night is even halfway over. He doesn’t remember any of it - doesn’t remember what he did, just what Jason and Eric report to him the next morning.

The time after that, he stays in his room with the door locked and his hearing aids off.

*

_Saturday, February 3, 1990_

*

Since Clint’s first visit to the club, he’s generated significant attention from the regulars there. Most of them come by to watch him for a few minutes as he goes through his paces. A few others – Seth, of course; John, the range master; and Carl, an Army vet – issue challenges to him, or give him paper targets to place over the normal bullseye archery targets.

Seth is the one who asks Clint if he’s ever shot a gun, and Clint can honestly say that he hasn’t. There were a few floating around at the circus, but they were never something he was allowed to touch.

“Wanna give it a shot?” Seth asks, then laughs at his own joke. Clint chuckles along with him, and for once, it doesn’t feel forced.

They pack up Clint’s bow and arrows and relocate to the gun range. Carl is already in his own lane, and Seth sets them up a few rows down, fussily arranging his targets and then loading his rifle just as carefully. He hands Clint a headset to protect his hearing. Clint thinks about it, then – about saying that no, he doesn’t need them, and here’s why.  Instead he places the set over his ears – aids and all – and doesn’t say a thing. He knows what happens when he opens his mouth.

Seth gives him the rifle, shows him how to hold it correctly so that his aim is steady and the kickback doesn’t slam the butt into his shoulder. Seth’s hands tilt his elbows up, straighten his back, adjust the angle of his hips, and Clint feels himself flush.

“[Okay]?” Seth asks.

“Yeah. Can I shoot now?”

“[Give] [---] [shot].”

“You’re hilarious,” Clint responds. He aims the way he was told and pulls the trigger.

Standing right beside him, it’s hard to miss the whoop that Seth lets out when a hole in the paper appears in the inner circle of the target. Clint stares down the lane, then hefts the rifle again and looks through the sight for another few moments. If he can just…

Another holler of enthusiasm next to him as the bullet clips the outermost edge of the bulls-eye. The third bullet goes through the center, and then Clint grins. He turns to find that they’ve been joined in their lane by John and Carl. Seth and John clap him on the back as he lowers the rifle and takes off the earmuffs, pressing his hair down over his ears.

Carl looks at him appraisingly and says, “You [-- --] [double] [the] distance?”

Clint does.

By the end of the afternoon, Clint is handling Seth’s rifle like he was born with it in his hands. As they’re packing up to finally leave, Carl says, “Come back next week. I’ll bring Betty and you can try her out.”

Clint doesn’t know who – or what – Betty is, but from the way Seth is practically vibrating  from excitement next to him, she must be something special.

*

_Saturday, February 10, 1990_

*

Clint doesn’t know anything about guns, but he can admit that Betty is a hell of a lot of fun to shoot. The wind is gusting in the range, and he has to constantly re-adjust his aim to account for it over the distances he’s shooting. The long distance and unfamiliar weapon make every shot a challenge, and for once, he doesn’t care about missing the bullseye – he just wants to see what kinds of shots are possible.

Seth is stuck managing the front desk all afternoon, though he does come by on his breaks to cheer Clint’s latest attempts to decorate a target. Carl is more low-key, subtly correcting Clint’s posture and murmuring advice in between shots.

“[You] --ver [think?] about -- [army]?” Carl asks at the end of the afternoon as they’re picking up shell casings.

“I don’t think they’d want me,” Clint replies.

Carl frowns, and doesn’t say anything more.

*

_Saturday, February 17, 1990_

*

“Carl called,” Seth says as Clint signs in the following Saturday. “He said to make sure you stuck around till he got here at four.”

No one at the range has ever given him a directive like that, and Clint wouldn’t peg Carl as the type to do so. Did he do something to Betty last week, break some part of the gun that wasn’t immediately evident? Clint asks, “He say why?”

Seth shrugs, unconcerned. “Just that he was bringing something. I dunnoh what. He don’t got anything better than Betty.”

“Maybe it’s a rocket launcher.”

Seth gives him a long, considering look, and then finally says, “I would pay good money to see you shoot a rocket launcher.”

Clint blushes in response, and heads outside to the archery field.

*

“I’m Mike,” the man says, reaching out for a handshake. Clint takes it, and glances over at Carl.

“Friend of mine,” Carl explains shortly, then sets a long rifle case on the bench. They’re at the far end of the shooting range, where he and Seth had set up after Seth’s shift was over and started a shooting competition. (Seth was losing, but didn’t seem to mind in the least).

Mike takes over, unlocking the rifle case and pulling out pieces that he starts to assemble into—“Is that a sniper rifle?” Seth asks. “Holy shit, it is!”

“I heard Betty wasn’t enough of a challenge for you,” Mike says, finishing up the last of the assembly. “Carl asked me to get ahold of something better, bet me twenty bucks you’d make it worth my while.”

Clint glances at Seth’s enthusiastic expression and Carl’s calm one. “Okay. Let’s try it.”

This time it’s Mike who sets up the rifle, shows Clint how to position his body, how to adjust the scope, how to aim at the target – which is set up far beyond where he was shooting with Betty. His first shot goes wide, and Mike tells him how to dial it in, how to wait for the wind to calm for a moment. His second shot clips the edge of the target, as does the third and fourth, and the tension among the three men behind him heightens.

When the fifth shot still fails to make it anywhere near the actual target, Clint gives up trying to aim through the scope. He reaches up to detach it completely – pretty easy, considering he watched Mike put it on – and hands it to the man when he steps up in confusion. “[You need] -- [to]—“

“No, I don’t,” Clint says. Sighting down the barrel, eyes now on the target without any lenses distorting his view, Clint pulls the trigger and smiles as a hole appears in the first circle of the target. Another minute adjustment, another shot, and another hole, this time just skirting the edge of the inner circle. One more shot, and—

“Bullseye!” Seth crows, staring down the range through binoculars. Clint glances up at Carl – who’s wearing that same considering look from last week – and at Mike, who just looks stunned.

Mike crouches down next to him and asks, “[You] o-- --[teen]?”

“Yeah.”

“You [got] a job?”

“Stocking shelves at Hill’s.”

“You flat-footed? A[--a--]tic? [-o--vi--ed] felon?”

Confused, Clint looks back up at Carl for clarity. “[--ell] -im [no],” Carl says.

“No,” Clint says. “I’m not any of those.”

“You got a [family]?”

Clint nods. Then stops. Then shrugs.

“You [know] --ow m--ch more m--ey an army [sniper] makes [--ared] [to a] stock boy?”

The possibilities flood Clint’s mind – money could help him find Jackie, find Bailey, give them a home and a life and—

“The army’s not going to take me,” Clint chokes out.

“[Why not]?” Mike asks. As if there was a simple answer to the question (there is, but he can’t say it, it’s been so good to come here and not be treated like he’s stupid just because there’s some plastic over his ears).

“[Breathe], Clint,” Seth says, crouching on his other side and putting a hand on his shoulder. “[Yo--] freak[ing] out.”

“No shit,” Clint replies, taking a gulping breath.

“If [--t] [cuz] you frea- out [some--], I’m sure they ca-- fi-- [that],” Seth says. “[Right], Mike?”

“Clint, you [hit] -- [-enter] o-- -- target at [st--a--] [distance?] -i--out [training] and -i--out a [scope],” Mike says. “I’m a [recruiter] for the army and -- never --een som[---] with aim [--y--ere] [close to] yours. [I] [think] -ou [-ou--] do - lot -- [-ood] -y [joining up].”

Clint gets up, then, and dodges between Carl and Mike to stalk away, back towards the main building. All of his stuff is in the locker room there; the next bus doesn’t come for another hour, but maybe he can hike down the road a bit to the next stop on the route so he doesn’t have to stand there looking like an idiot.

Of course, Seth catches up to him in the locker room, grabs him by the shoulder, and Clint twists away with his arms raised to cover his head.

“Hey!” Seth says, alarmed. “Hey, calm it down, what is wrong?”

“A lot of things,” Clint says, turning to face his locker and start twisting the dial on the padlock. “Everything.”

Clint finishes putting in the combination and yanks the body of the lock down. It doesn’t open, and he tugs on it a few more times. His breathing’s getting short again, and he feels like he’s going to throw up. He leans forward to rest his forehead against the cool metal of the locker and tries to breathe through it like he knows he’s supposed to.

The touch appears on his shoulder again, more gentle this time. He swallows a sob, tries not to let it out. Seth must hear it anyway, because now he’s pulling Clint away from the wall and into his arms. “Hey. Hey, c’mon, man. It can’t be that bad.”

Clint lets out another sob, mortified. He holds in the next one, and the next.

“Do you not wanna join the Army ‘cause you’re gay?” Seth asks quietly.

“Just ‘cause I’m letting you hug me doesn’t mean I’m gay, Jesus,” Clint pulls away, leans his back against the lockers and then slides down to sit on the floor.

Seth follows him down. “Okay, then, what is it? ‘Cause it sounds like Mike really wants you, and it sounds like you really want it, too. Your face just lit up when he said it, and then you just… freaked out.” He shifts over to brush his shoulder against Clint’s. “Are you freaking out because it’s a good thing and that’s weird?”

Clint shakes his head and stares at the floor, because he knows if he looks at Seth again, it’ll all come pouring out. He says, “It’s a good thing and I can’t have it.”

“Why can’t you have it?”

“They won’t take me.”

Seth huffs. “You know, you keep saying that, but you won’t say why. We can’t fix it if you don’t say why.”

“Because you can’t fix it!” Clint shouts, pounding his fists on the floor. “Nobody can fix it! Everybody talks to me like I’m stupid. Nobody thinks I can do anything. This was the only place where nobody—and I told Carl that I didn’t want to, but he brought that guy in anyway and now—now everybody—“

He cuts himself off and jumps to his feet. Thank God, the padlock opens easily this time. He pulls his stuff out of his locker as Seth says, “Nobody here thinks you’re stupid—“

He slams the locker door. “Well, I am. And now everybody can know it.”

He reaches up and pulls his hearing aids up and out of his ears, pulls the receiver out of the back of his collar, and chucks it all at Seth. “Surprise,” he says, and slams out of the locker room.

*

He takes the bus back home in silence, realizing about twenty minutes into the ride that he’s probably not only lost his only set of (expensive) hearing aids, but most likely his only place of respite from the world.

But then he gets off at his stop and walks up the block to his apartment complex to see Seth sitting on his front stoop, a small box in his hands.

“What are you doing here?” Clint asks, stunned.

Seth hands him the box – a .22 caliber ammunition box – and inside, wrapped up in a few pieces of torn newspaper, are Clint’s hearing aids and receiver. Clint stares down at them and makes no move to put them in. A touch at his wrist makes him look up.

“[I’m sorry],” Seth says. “[Mike] [--] [Carl] – [sorry, too].”

Clint shrugs. “I knew it wasn’t gonna work out. I shouldn’t have gotten… invested.”

“[See] [--] [next week]?” Seth asks.

“Maybe,” Clint replies, and turns to go inside. “Thanks for bringing my stuff. ‘Preciate it.”

*

The following Monday, Clint stays in bed again – another no-call no-show – and is suspended without pay for the rest of the week. He doesn’t go back to the club. He just rides the bus lines for a few hours each day and stares out the windows as Cleveland rolls by.

He returns to Hill’s the next week, and vows to do better and keep his job, because…. well, isn’t steady employment something they look for in a parent? The army had seemed, for a moment, like a magical solution that could make everything better. But now, everything really does hinge on Clint being able to keep his first job that doesn’t involve shooting at things. As soon as he finds Bailey.

*

Clint spends the month of March avoiding everything. When he finally goes back to the club – after enough time has passed that maybe Carl and the others have forgotten about the recruiter debacle – a white man shows up half an hour into his practice time on the archery field. He’s wearing a brown suit and a mustache like he wants to be Tom Selleck; he watches Clint shoot for forty-five minutes and then leaves without saying a word.

The following week, a black man in a slightly-better-looking blue suit is there, standing stiffly, like he’s painfully military. When Clint goes to fetch his first set of arrows from the target, he shoots the man a glare, and he’s gone the next time Clint turns around.

No one shows up the next Saturday, but the week after that, another man in a much nicer suit is there. He’s standing further back – probably an attempt to be more subtle – but Clint sees him. Of course he sees him.

Clint is beginning to feel like a performer at the circus again, only this time for an audience of bland-faced suits who never seem impressed, instead of smiling, laughing, thunderous-applause-making families and children. There’s no pride in this performance, no sense of accomplishment. Just a sour taste at the back of his throat.

“Your suits are back,” Seth says to him one Saturday in mid-May as they’re setting up the targets.

“I know,” Clint says. This weekend there’s two of them, lurking in a back corner: an Asian woman with her long hair left loose, and another white man, this one with brown hair and poor posture that would probably have made the last few suits cringe. It’s probably a put-on so that he appears harmless. Clint isn’t fooled.

“Want me to tell them to fuck off?” Seth offers.

Clint shrugs. Seth sets his stuff down and walks to the edge of the field. Because Clint’s watching, he knows that the two suits have already disappeared by the time Seth makes it over to where they were standing.

Clint takes another two weeks off after that.

*

_Saturday, June 2, 1990_

*

Clint is seriously starting to consider joining another rod and gun club, once he can find one that’s on a bus line. But then Seth lets him know that the suits haven’t been around, and it’s safe to come back, so he decides to give it one last shot.

The archery field is empty of suits when he gets there. Just a few regulars are shooting, with one or two newbies down at the far end. He gets through his warm-up and glances around, but for once, no one is paying any attention to him. Whereas before he could always tell when a suit was there, today, there’s no one.

That feeling lasts right up to the beginning of his last set. A glance doesn’t reveal anyone close by. After a few more shots, the feeling hasn’t abated, and he lowers his bow to take a longer, obvious look around the field and the range. No one.

He raises his bow again and shoots his last arrow.

“Nice shot,” says a voice from behind him.

Clint spins. “How did you get there?” he demands.

“I’ve been here,” the man says. He’s tall, black, bald, and wearing sunglasses despite the overcast day. “Thought you’d seen me, since you seem to see everything.”

Clint brings his bow to his front and holds it defensively in both hands. This man isn’t a suit, isn’t wearing a suit, but... “Who are you?”

The man nods his head to the exit. “Let’s go have a talk.”

Clint stays where he is. The man smiles, and sticks out his hand to shake. Clint takes it, hesitantly. “Colonel Nick Fury. Nice to meet you, Mr. Barton.”

Fury leads him to the empty seating area overlooking the archery field, and sits. Clint sits as well, as far away as he can without being impolite. Fury must notice, because he smiles again.

“Why are you here?” Clint asks. “Are you a suit?”

“What makes you ask?”

“Buncha suits have been stalking me for a couple months, sneaking in here to watch me practice. Different ones, each time.”

“Ah,” Fury says. “Those would be representatives from the Army, Navy, and Air Force.”

Clint pulls up short. “What? Wait, what?”

“The short story is, that Army recruiter of yours, Sergeant Wells, called someone, who called someone, who called me, to talk about this kid with crazy aim who was wasting himself in a department store back room in Cleveland.”

“Any of them tell you I’m deaf?” Clint asks bitterly. He thought he’d gotten over that little failure. Guess not.

“All of ‘em did. That’s why it took so long for me to hear about you. I owe a guy ten bucks for forwarding me your file.”

“What do you want my file for?”

“Because I want you to come work for me.”

Clint spits out, “Bullshit.”

Fury doesn’t flinch. “What’s bullshit?”

Clint stands, ready to storm away from this… whoever this guy is, he isn’t funny. “Anyone who wants me to shoot also needs me to hear. I’ve done my research. I’m disabled. I’m disqualified.”

Fury chuckles. Clint sees red for a moment, and then Fury’s taking off his sunglasses, and what Clint thought to be vitiligo turns out to be scarring – extensive scarring – over a lost eye.

“I work for S.H.I.E.L.D.,” Fury is saying. “Ain’t nobody’s disqualified, if they’re good enough.”

Clint stares. Not at the scarring, but at Fury. “I don’t… I’m not…”

“What, good enough?”

“I know I’m good enough,” Clint shoots back. “But I can’t leave, I’ve got… responsibilities, here. I can’t just up… just up and… _leave_ , because...”

He trails off, fervor gone, and looks away from Fury’s piercing gaze.

“Because you’re waiting to find your kid?” Fury asks after a pause

Clint’s stomach clenches. “How the hell do you know about that?”

Fury leans back in his chair. “I read your file before I came out here. Information wasn’t hard to find.”

“So you know I can’t leave. I can’t leave, if there’s a chance that I find them.”

Fury looks at Clint for a long moment. “Look,” he says. “I read your file. You’ve been spending a lot of time and effort trying to do right by your kid. Keeping a steady job, staying out of trouble. That’s admirable, that really is. But what you want to happen isn’t _going_  to happen. You know it’s not. Kid is gone. You gotta accept that. And you gotta start making some decisions based on what’s best for _you_ , not him.

“Otherwise, you’re going to still be sitting here forty years from now, saying ‘Hang on, this might be the day I find them.’ You know what I’m saying?”

Clint’s eyes burn. He doesn’t want to hear it, doesn’t want to admit that maybe this stranger is right, that Fury is giving voice to a truth he’s been ignoring for months.

“So,” Fury says after a few minutes, when Clint has wiped his face and taken a few shuddering breaths. “You want a job that’s not stocking shelves?”

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No specific warnings for this chapter, other than for 20-year-old boys being dicks.

Sunday, September 9, 1990

*

“How was your first week at the Academy?” Colonel Fury asks over the phone once Clint flips the telephone switch on his new ear-level aids. He loves them for being lighter, for not having the obnoxious receiver clipped to his shirt, for being easier to hide under his hair. No one has said a word about them so far - the longest he’s gone without comment in almost two years.

Clint flops backwards onto his dorm bed and the blanket that he, himself, got to pick out from a catalog, along with most of the rest of his room. It’s deep purple, and matches his sheets. “I think you made a mistake sending me here,” he says, honestly.

“You saying I make mistakes?” Fury asks.

“Sending me here was a mistake, yeah. All these people - they have experience and jobs and… and  _college degrees_ , and I flunked my GED.” He rolls onto his side and curls up a bit, phone under his ear. This way, he’s facing away from his desk, which is covered in books and paper and his sad attempts at organizing his schoolwork. “What am I even doing here?”

Fury speaks slowly. “What you’re doing there is getting the training to become an agent of SHIELD, same as the rest of them.”

“I’m not as good as the rest of them.”

Fury snorts at that. “They a better shot than you?”

Clint echoes the derisive huff. “No. But what happens when they get trained up, too? When they all shoot as well as me? What makes me so special, then?”

“How about loyalty? Honesty? Perseverance? Old-fashioned stubbornness? Those can’t be trained into anyone… and I personally doubt any of them will ever be able to catch up to your range scores, but what do I know?”

Clint takes a deep breath, and then asks the question that’s been rattling around his head all week, when he met his classmates, who started comparing colleges and ROTC chapters, and all he could do was stand in the back and comb his hair down over his ears. “What happens to me if I flunk out?”

“You’re not gonna flunk out.”

“What happens, though?”

“If, on the off chance, you for some reason decide being a SHIELD agent isn’t for you, we’ll find a place for you. You can join up with the communications department, or go into administration. Hell, you wanna open your own daycare, fine, we’ll make it happen. But give this a shot, first.”

“This is the weirdest pep talk I’ve ever had.”

“Because I’m not threatening you with something horrible if you fail?

“...Yeah,” Clint responds faintly.

“Yeah, well, get used to it,” Fury grumbles.

*

The first time their introductory seminar class is assigned group work, Clint ends up, to his infinite relief, partnered with four women. Lraaz, whose slight accent gives Clint difficulty for several minutes until he gets used to it, finds a way to immediately take charge without alienating anyone. Anyone other than Rosita, who leans back in her chair and scowls. Then she suddenly seems to remember herself – she uncrosses her arms, puts the front legs of her chair back on the floor, and manages to reduce her scowl to, at least, an expression of intense concentration on their assigned task. Donna and Meredith, rounding out the rest, listen attentively as Lraaz walks them through her strategy.

At the end, with the detritus of their strategy-making assignment scattered across their table, they hear the instructor call all the group leaders to the front of the room to explain their group’s results. Lraaz heads up, and Clint turns to look over their worksheets one more time.

“Barton,” the instructor calls, once the room has been brought back to order. “Get up here.”

Clint stands and heads to the front of the room. “Yeah?”

Agent White frowns. “Tell us about your results.”

“Huh?”

White’s face hardens. “You’re team leader – report.”

Clint gestures helplessly to Lraaz, standing at attention at the front of the room. She, along with the rest of the class, is intent on the exchange. “I’m not team leader. She is.”

The instructor blinks, then shoots him a disappointed look. “Have a seat, then.”

The group leaders proceed to present their solutions, and Aaron’s team is declared the winner. After class, the instructor pulls Clint aside to lecture him about taking responsibility for his mistakes, and not fobbing off his failures onto other people, leaving them to take the heat. The exchange is confusing and weird, but he takes it silently. It seems like insisting that Lraaz was the one in charge would only get her in trouble, at this point.

Clint walks out of the lecture hall to find his group waiting for him. “What did he want to talk about?” Meredith asks.

Clint gestures helplessly from himself, to Lraaz, to the classroom behind him, and finally says, “I have no idea.”

Rosita huffs in obvious disappointment. Lraaz shoots her a quelling look. Some sort of silent communication seems to bounce between the four of them, and then Meredith steps backwards, turns to head down the hall, and says, “I don’t know about you guys, but I could just about destroy a pizza right now.”

The rest turn to follow, and Donna says, “It’s salad day at the caf.”

Meredith brushes that off with, “We can have pizza salad.”

“How does one accomplish pizza salad?”

“Salad’s just a bunch of stuff all chopped up and mixed together in a bowl, right?”

“Yes…?” Donna asks, drawing the vowel out slowly.

“So just chop up some pizza, toss it in a bowl, and boom. Pizza salad.”

Donna laughs. “I like it.”

Rosita says, “Ladies and gentlemen, Meredith Jones.”

Lraaz steps up next to Clint as they step outside and make their way towards the dining hall. She says, “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Sure seems like I did,” he responds. “I’m good at doing things wrong.”

The look she pierces him with is assessing. “You were fine. Don’t worry about it.”

More group work is assigned over the course of the class, and the five of them continue to work together in building strategies to complete specified objectives. After the instructor tells them to switch group leaders with each new project, Rosita takes the lead. Her plan runs on the aggressive side, and she snarls under her breath every time it doesn’t go her way. Meredith’s depends on evasion, deflection, and never being where she’s expected to be; Clint enjoys that session. Donna’s day is the most successful yet, though Clint couldn’t say how she did it – a little bit of Lraaz’s planning, some of Rosita’s assertiveness, a sudden fake-out that screams Meredith until the fake turns out to be not a fake, but a Trojan horse that finally gets them through the enemy’s defenses. The instructor shoots Clint a dirty look during every exercise when one of the others takes the lead, though Clint couldn’t say why.

The fifth group project has Clint at the head. It… doesn’t go well. He can see where he needs to be. Can see the endgame, the pattern in how his opponent moves and what it’s going to be doing six steps from now. What he can’t get a bead on is how to get there from here – the six steps he needs to take to get ahead.

He can hear Rosita tapping her nails on the tabletop impatiently, and see Donna and Lraaz glancing back and forth at each other in silent dismay. Every step he takes is a misstep. Every target he aims at he misses, and then he’s scrambling to find the next move that will get him any closer to his goal.

The exercise ends, and they’ve obviously failed in spectacular fashion. As expected, Meredith is laughing at him, Rosita is scowling, and the other two are pretending to be completely and utterly unconcerned.

“Good try, Barton,” Agent White says as he passes by. “C-plus.”

Clint’s head whips around. “Huh? But I failed. Really, really hard!”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself.”

Someone is kicking him under the table, but he ignores it. “Just because I’m hard on myself doesn’t mean I’m wrong. This,” he gestures to the mess on the table, “is an obvious F. Obvious.”

“Take the grade, Barton. You’re free to go.”

His team pulls him out of the room as he continues his protests. “Shut up, Clint, you did fine,” Rosita snaps once they’re in the hall.

“I cannot begin to tell you how not-fine that was. I missed every shot.”

“When it comes to strategy,” Lraaz says, “missing individual shots isn’t a failure.”

“That makes absolutely zero sense.”

“You’re focusing too hard on each individual element,” she continues, as if he had not interrupted. “That was your problem on the board, and that’s your problem right now. You need to step back and look at the whole picture. You didn’t win this time, but you didn’t lose as badly as you think you did.”

“But—“

“Stop being such a sore loser and take your consolation prize,” Rosita cuts in. “It’s more than Meredith got last week, and she actually tried.”

Lraaz elbows Rosita. Rosita glares back at her. Meredith grabs Clint’s left arm, Donna his right, and they drag him away from the imminent argument. “Ice cream time!” Meredith announces cheerfully.  
Behind them, Lraaz says, “You don’t have to be so insensitive.”

“He’s overreacting,” Rosita shoots back, and then Meredith and Donna are pulling him around a corner and he misses Lraaz’s response.

“Am I overreacting?” he asks as they step outside.

“Ignore Rosita, you know she’s a pill,” Meredith says. “Let’s hurry over to the caf, it’s fish hoagie day and I hate waiting in line.”

*

Tuesday, October 9, 1990

*

“How’s your classes?” Fury asks on one of those random evenings when he calls Clint to check in.

“I’m flunking strategy,” Clint says, honestly. May as well not surprise the man when his grades come in.

“You ask the professor for help?”

Clint sighs. “He says I’m not doing as badly as I think I am, and to relax.”

“That so?”

“I’m not…” He pauses for a moment to think, trying to find the right words to explain the feeling he’s been getting. “I’ve got the same grade as Meredith except she’s won way more assignments than me, so either my grade is way too high or her grade is way too low.”

Fury makes a noncommittal noise and asks, “How’s your math class?”

“It’s fine.”

“Fine? I hear you’re at the top of the class.”

Clint shrugs, even though Fury can’t see. “Once I figured out what she was saying, it got better, I guess.”

“What she was saying? Your hearing aids working alright?”

“Yeah, they’re fine, it’s just…. product and denominator and stuff like that. The numbers part was easy once I figured out the rest of it.”

“She wants to remove you from the class.”

Clint sits up straight, alarmed. “What? Why? What did I do? I haven’t--”

“Relax. She wants to move you to a more advanced class.”

Clint lowers the phone receiver and stares at it for a second in complete disbelief, then brings it back to his ear. “A month ago I thought she was speaking Chinese half the time, and now - what?”

Fury just sounds amused. “Shocked you’re good at something other than shooting?”

“I’m not--”

“Yup. Shocked.”

*

At first, Clint feels like an outcast, an intruder, when the five of them start hanging out after class, in the evenings and on the weekends.. Then for a few days, the team’s united front in some very random ways – against their strategy instructor, for instance – makes him feel once again like a little brother. Then, he figures out that Rosita is irrational and cranky before her morning coffee, and Meredith can’t let a conversation go two minutes without a wisecrack and can’t go a full day without making a questionable food choice, and that Lraaz is the oldest of four and regards everyone in the world as a younger sibling, Rosita and Meredith and Donna included in with Clint.

Then he feels like this is maybe what normal friends do with their time.

They sit in the student lounge on their nights off and watch whatever movie is showing on network TV (SHIELD Academy considers its students too busy to warrant a cable package, a fact Meredith bemoans at least once per week).

In October, they go to the nearest town and watch Night of the Living Dead at the local cinema, because Meredith has terrifying taste in movies.

In November, they borrow a car and drive for an hour to another town to watch Dances With Wolves, because Lraaz insists that they see something with artistic merit this time, something that might actually win an Oscar. Clint and Meredith both fall asleep an hour in.

In December, they go back to the first town and, upon Rosita’s recommendation, watch Edward Scissorhands. No one falls asleep.

Sometimes, Donna combs her fingers through his hair and tells him he should cut it. He ducks his head and ignores her. Just because they’re friends doesn’t mean they know what it’s like to be Clint Barton.

*

Monday, December 10, 1990

*

The second time Clint’s turn to be group leader comes around, he tries, he really does, and in the end he fails even harder than the first – hard enough that even their instructor has to admit that Clint’s strategy went completely, utterly off the rails. “If this had been a real operation,” Agent White says, “we’d all be skeletons sitting in a smoking crater.”

So when his third turn comes up, he stares down at the table and their assignment and says to the group, “What do you think I should do?”

“That’s not how this works, Clint,” Lraaz says, gently. “You need to come up with the overall strategy. Then we each play our part in making it happen.”

Meredith adds, “You can’t pass off being group leader to someone else,”

“I’m going to fail again, though,” he says. “I have every time.”

“So do something about it,” Rosita snaps. Lraaz places a quelling hand on her arm, which Rosita shakes off. “I’m so tired of this. You know what your problem is, Clint? You’re a passenger in your own life. You sit there and let things happen to you, you never make things happen for you not actively. You’re a passive participant, at best, and it is annoying.”

“Hey, fuck off,” he says, over Lraaz’s shocked, “Rosita!”

“You don’t do anything for yourself, when do you do anything that isn’t caused by someone else pushing you? You are the least ambitious person in the entire Academy, too lazy to lift a finger in your own life. What are you even doing here?”

Lraaz makes a shushing noise, even though the surrounding din of other teams working on their assignments is covering up the sound of their argument.

“I am trying,” Clint says, his voice harsh and low. “With everything I got I am trying to make this work, but I am surrounded by people with diplomas and degrees and fucking military rankings when I didn’t even get to finish the fifth grade.”

All four of the faces staring at him jerk in shock at that. Yeah, he doesn’t belong here. “I am working _so, so hard_  just to keep my head above water, and I am drowning, so go fuck yourself, Rosita.”

*

They don’t lose. It should feel like a validation, but it doesn’t, really. Turning back to the assignment, he aims all of his resources at the one weakness in the opponent’s strategy, and he shoots at it over and over until he breaks through. He presents his results to the class, ignores the instructor’s nod of approval, and then books it back to his dorm as soon as the session is over.

Back in his room, he’s finally calmed down – or maybe just exhausted himself from pacing the floor and kicking the corner of his dresser. There’s a soft knock, and then Lraaz steps in. “I thought it’d be Donna,” he says to her.

“She’s busy talking Rosita down,” Lraaz replies. “You know I’d just make it worse.”

“No, you wouldn’t. You’re the one Rosita likes best.”

She arches an eyebrow. “Know her that well, do you?”

“Enough to know better than to let her get under my skin like that. I overreacted.”

“But she did get under your skin.”

“Yeah.”

“What you said, Clint. I know you’re trying your best, and you feel like it isn’t good enough, but it is. You are good at hand-to-hand, you’re the best there is on the range, and all the things you maybe weren’t so good at when you arrived here, you’ve improved dramatically. All across the board.”

“Not good enough,” he mutters. “I always find a new way to fail. It’s what has Rosita so pissed.”

“Rosita is pissed because she’s Rosita,” Lraaz says evenly. “Nothing you do is going to make that better or worse. That is her problem, and you can’t take it personally.”

She places her hand on the back of his head and combs through the long hair there. He shrugs her hand off, not wanting the touch. “I know. Just having a bad day. Bad time of year.”

Three sharp taps at the door, and Lraaz stands. “That’s Donna, with Rosita. Are you ready to speak with her?”

He shrugs. “Sure.”

Lraaz leaves, and Rosita enters. She sits down at his desk chair, facing him, and begins. “I’m sorry for what I said. And for making you feel bad. It was wrong of me to say that.”

“Doesn’t mean it wasn’t true.”

“It’s not, and I should not have said it was, because I know how you internalize anything negative about yourself—“ she catches herself, softens her tone. “I need to be more patient, and understanding of… people who aren’t me.”

“That’s a lot of people, Rosita.”

“I’m aware.”

The silence is awkward. Clint figures now might be the only time he gets to ask, “Why are you like this?”

Rosita stares at him. He can see the wave of emotions cross her face – anger at him, turning quickly into anger at herself. She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. Her hands go to the buttons of her blouse and she releases them one by one. She pulls it back and he sees, beneath the band of her brassiere, a half-dozen or so long, narrow scars. Like you might get from the blade of a knife.

“This isn’t why,” she says, looking down at the marks on her abdomen. “I was already like this when it happened. Already too much myself. But this makes it harder to… not be angry all the time.”

Clint nods, then pulls his own t-shirt up and over his head, dropping it on the bed next to him. He sees Rosita’s eyes trace the angry red scar on his chest from the bullet, barely faded after two years.  
“This is what happens when I try to do something, and I fail.”

Rosita slowly nods. He can see that she gets it.

They sit there, shirtless, for a few moments. Then Clint rouses himself. “Want to put our shirts back on inside-out to mess with the others?”

Rosita smiles. “Definitely.”

*

Tuesday, March 5, 1991

*

“How’s your directed study?”

“With Professor Hall?”

“You got any other directed studies I should know about?” Fury asks with sarcasm.

Clint takes a minute to think. The directed study got thrown onto his schedule last minute, and it hasn’t been a study so much as Professor Hall gushing at him about science via video conference and Clint trying to participate in the conversation as best he can. “The stuff he’s teaching is… interesting. The stuff about force and inertia, and Newton’s Laws, that made a lot of sense when we got into it. Now we’re getting into quantum stuff and that’s weird. He’s kind of weird.”

“Weirder than any other scientist?”

“I don’t know any other scientists.”

Fury hmms. “We’ll have to fix that. Doctor Hall is one of SHIELD’s most respected scientists. He’s been with us since the seventies, doing work on… well, let’s just call it “big stuff.” It’s a privilege to work with him. So tell me what’s weird.”

Clint opens his mouth, closes it. Then he bursts out, “He wants me to come study at SciOps.”

Fury, to his credit, doesn’t laugh, although Clint can tell he’s holding it in. “He’s weird because he thinks you’re smart enough to study science professionally? Barton, that makes a lot of us weird.”

“No. Well, yeah. But… sometimes he says weird things. Keeps asking me about my past and my family and how I got recruited. I keep telling him it’s personal but he… I don’t know, it’s just weird.” There are things - a lot of things - that he hasn’t told his new friends, and he spends most of his days with them. Professor Hall’s nosy questions through the television speakers make him want to close up like an iron lockbox.

“It’s normal for people to be interested in where you came from,” Fury says, in that awful tone where he’s trying his best not to be parental at Clint.

“I guess,” Clint mutters.

“He making you uncomfortable?”

Clint doesn’t answer, and after a pause, Fury says, “All right. Well, I think you’ve gotten as much out of Physics 101 as you need. How about we take those Newton’s Laws and put them to use over at Engineering? Make some more advanced trick arrows like I promised you.”

Clint sags in relief. “Yeah.”

*

Saturday, June 23, 1991

*

Their final exam in their strategy class is a real-world scenario: if they survive, they pass. Their class is divided up into groups of three. Clint is relieved to be paired with Donna and Lraaz - sticking him with Lraaz and Rosita would be explosive in a very bad way, and sticking him with Donna and Meredith would be too hilarious to get anything done. So he’s happy to be paired up with Donna and Lraaz when they’re dropped off in the middle of nowhere with no supplies and told to find their way home without dying.

(They’re all being monitored, of course. And their instructors have heat signature sensors and quinjets standing by in case they run into unexpected obstacles - moose, or instance - but all in all, they’re on their own).

“Food, water, shelter,” Lraaz recites as the quinjet takes off into the sky. “Let’s set up camp.”

“Don’t we just want to get started?” Clint asks.

“We’ve been in transit for four hours, we don’t know where we are, and we have no supplies. Our first order of business is to make ourselves comfortable and assess the situation. This isn’t a race to the finish.”

“Alright, well, what’s first, then?”

They find a patch of ground, sit down, and proceed to go through all of their assets: three granola bars, fourteen hairpins, three sets of tactical clothes down to the boots, and one Leatherman utility tool.

(“If only we had a wheelbarrow, that would be something.”

“Hush, Clint.”)

Clint is sent up a tree to survey the surrounding land and look for landmarks. When he gets back down, Donna is halfway finished shaping a bow out of a large tree branch and Lraaz is stripping down a handful of long, straight sticks.

“I love you guys,” Clint says.

They both smile widely. Lraaz recovers first. “If we’re going to get out of here comfortably, we need to eat something more than leaves and berries. Have you ever done any game hunting?”

“All the time,” Clint replies.

“Good. Now, tell me what you saw up there.”

Clint takes one of the proto-arrows and starts drawing a crude map in the dirt. “We’ve got mountains in the north and east, easing away to rolling hills to the south. There’s a stream just to the north of us, and a larger stream or river pretty far out to the west.”

“Great,” Lraaz says. “Anything else?”

“There’s clear skies and not much of a breeze, so it shouldn’t rain tonight.”

“And that’s Clint Barton with the weather. Now back to you, Lraaz,” Donna quips as she hands Clint the finished bow. It’s not much of a weapon - it won’t help them a whit if they come up against any predators - but for rabbit or pheasant, it’ll do.

“We’ll need water, first thing. I think we should head for the stream first for water, and then more or less follow it until we reach the river or civilization, whichever comes first. Sound good?”

“Sounds good,” Clint and Donna agree.

Over the next five days, the three of them hike through the woods, drink from the stream, and eat barbecue rabbit around a campfire. Up until the rainstorm hits on the fourth day, it’s the most fun Clint’s had in years.

In the end, they’re the second group to exit the woods, find a phone, and call in to their instructor. The members of the first group all had to be hospitalized after essentially running the entire way on no food and minimal water. As for the last group, one member fell and broke his leg on the first day, so one stayed with him while the other ran for help.

A week later, the entire class comes down sick with intestinal parasites from drinking contaminated water, and Clint decides he never wants to go camping ever again.

*

Monday, September 30, 1991

*

Clint’s not looking for a girlfriend. Between physical training, staying on top of classwork and making sure Rosita doesn’t snap and maim someone for looking at her wrong, he doesn’t have the time or the energy for what can only end up as a failed attempt at a relationship. He doesn’t understand how others can pull it off, either. Aaron next door has a long-term girlfriend in the foreign service whom he calls every night. Meredith is currently helping a girl in her Spanish class cheat on her boyfriend. He doesn’t know how they do it.

Around the time they learn that Meredith’s girlfriend’s boyfriend is also her boyfriend – Clint doesn’t know whether to congratulate her or run for the hills, but Lraaz makes that decision for him – Clint has been transferred to a higher-level SHIELD-fu class. Donna’s in this class with him, a fact for which he is eternally grateful because it means there’s at least one person in the room who won’t laugh when he inevitably fucks something up.

He doesn’t fuck up. Not for a long time. Which is what makes it all the more surprising when the instructor switches up their sparring partners, and Clint loses Donna and is paired up with Dustin Hoernecke. Clint doesn’t notice anything remarkable about Dustin. He’s about an inch shorter than Clint (which is just tragic, give the man a consolation prize). Clint doesn’t have the chance to notice anything else before he’s suddenly on the ground, no clue how he got there, Dustin bearing down on him in some sort of full-body lock – and Dustin has the most beautiful eyes he’s ever seen.

Clint feels himself flush red.

Dustin tightens his hold, digging his hips into Clint’s and stares down at him with one eyebrow raised. “Tapping out?”

Clint narrows his eyes and refocuses. “Not a chance.”

He rocks his body, swings a leg around, and uses Rosita’s second-favorite Dirty Trick to flip Dustin head over feet and onto his back. Clint follows, pinning Dustin’s shoulders with his knees, and grins down at him. “Tap out?”

The shock on Dustin’s face is quickly replaced by a predatory smile, and he taps the mat.

When Clint walks out of the locker room after class, Dustin is in the hallway outside, leaning against the wall without a care in the world. He smirks when Clint approaches. “Not many people can shift me once I’ve gotten them pinned,” he says. “You’re clever.”

Clint flushes again at the praise, and Dustin’s smile deepens. They walk together to Clint’s next class, talking about where Clint had picked up that particular move, and where Dustin had learned his body-lock, and Dustin leaves him at the door of his classroom with a wave.

*

Friday, October 25, 1991

*

Dustin is a Hydra spy, intent on killing Clint slowly. It feels like every other class, Dustin is paired with him for at least one bout on the mat. They’re pretty evenly matched – Dustin is stronger, but Clint is more flexible – so the outcome of every bout depends on who can be faster at the draw.

Clint can’t help but notice that every time Dustin has him pinned, he gets a glint in his eye, like this is the most fun he’s had all day. And every time Clint is on top, he feels a rush – not power, but something – that he’s never felt when pinning Donna or Lraaz or Aaron.

It all comes to a head on a Friday afternoon a few weeks after Clint had joined the advanced class. Everyone else had vacated the locker room soon after class let out, which is a relief because Clint’s dropped one hearing aid down under the sink and there’s no one there to laugh at him (or step on it accidentally because apparently Academy students really are that klutzy, and Clint is no exception). He finds it in a dark corner, next to a shallow puddle of water. It isn’t in the puddle, thankfully, but the floor is definitely damp, so Clint puts the aid back in the case and resigns himself to spending the rest of the day one-eared while he waits for it to dry out.

Having only one ear probably explains why he doesn’t notice someone coming up behind him until they’re _right there_ , too far into his personal space to be an accident, and Clint has whoever they are pinned up against the lockers before he realizes that it’s Dustin. They stare at each other in shock. Clint loosens his hold, starts to stammer out an apology, “Sorry, I didn’t hear you—”

Dustin takes advantage of the opening, grabbing Clint by the biceps and spinning him around to pin him against the wall, reversing their positions.

“Got you,” Dustin says, and kisses him.

Clint’s stomach drops, and he reflexively pushes Dustin hard enough to send him falling down on his rear. Clint heaves a deep breath as Dustin stares up at him angrily.

“What the hell, Clint?”

“You kissed me!”

“Yeah! I kind of thought you’d kiss back!”

“What?”

Dustin stands, absently dusting off the seat of his pants. “Jesus Christ, Clint, are you that fucking oblivious?”

“What – you – I – what?”

Dustin stares at him. “Wow. You really _are_  oblivious. What the hell do you think we’ve been doing all this time?”

“I don’t know! I thought… I just wanted to be around you. I didn’t – I don’t – I’m not – ”

“Gay?”

Clint stares back.

Dustin runs his hand through his hair and then down his face to rub at his eyelids. “Christ, I am not drunk enough for this conversation. Come on.”

“Come on where?”

“My room.” He pauses, looks back at Clint still hugging the wall. “Not for that. I am going to drink at least two beers, and then we’re going to talk.”

Clint still doesn’t move. Dustin reaches down and takes Clint’s hand, weaving their fingers together. Clint feels something warm seep through his brain, displacing some of the panic and confusion.  
“Come on.”

Clint goes.

*

That becomes Clint’s Friday night routine. If the others ask, he says he’s going to the library, or putting extra time in at the gym, or studying with a classmate for the only class he doesn’t share with any of them. In reality, he goes to Dustin’s dorm, where they drink, and talk, and slowly inch closer to each other on the couch. Sometimes Clint wonders if this is what dating is actually like – real dating, not fooling around behind the big top or working together to load up the caravan. He’d known Jackie since they were twelve. Right now, Jackie’s not here. This is something new.

*

Friday, November 8, 1991

*

“The key,” Dustin says, “is to look without anyone knowing that you’re looking.”

*

Friday, November 29, 1991

*

“The key,” Dustin says, “is to pick someone you know won’t rat you out, even if they wind up being not interested in anything.”

“How did you know I wouldn’t rat you out?”

“Because I knew you were interested. If someone’s interested, they’re not going to tell someone else about it, ‘cause they’ll just out themselves in the process.”

*

Friday, December 20, 1991

*

Clint rushes in, closing the door swiftly behind him and launching himself onto the couch. “Sorry I’m late. Rosita had me pinned down. Literally.”

Dustin puts an arm around him. “You tell her where you were going?”

“I said I was going anywhere she wasn’t.”

His jaw drops. “…How are you still alive?”

“Meredith distracted her and I ran for it.”

*

Friday, January 3, 1992

*

“The key,” Dustin says, breath hitching, “Is to press up with your tongue and… yeah, like that…”

*

Friday, January 24, 1992

*

Lraaz is waiting for him outside the men’s locker room after his last class of the day, and crooks a finger at him expectantly. Clint resolutely doesn’t look back at Dustin, right behind him, and breaks away from the crowd to walk over to her. She’s leaning against the wall, almost in the exact same spot as Dustin had after their first class together.

“I should let you know up front,” she says, in lieu of a greeting, “that the others wanted to let Rosita do this.”

“Do what?”

She slides her arm around his, all friendly. “We haven’t seen much of you lately, and it’s a Friday night. Time to put down the books and come out with us.”

“I really have to—”

“Clint,” she says. “This is why they wanted to send Rosita. Because they knew you’d try and get out of it.”

“I’m not trying to get out of it, Jeez. Where is this coming from?”

“You haven’t been around much lately, so you’re coming over tonight to make it up to us. To quote Meredith, we miss your stupid face. Besides, it’s your turn to pick the movie.”

Clint feels a pang of guilt, which he knows was Lraaz’s plan all along. Maybe he’s been a little distracted lately.

“Come on. We won’t even interrogate you on where you’ve been spending your time lately.”

*

Tuesday, January 28, 1992

*

“What the hell happened on Friday?” Dustin asks on Tuesday when he sneaks into Clint’s room late that evening. “You ran off with that Indian chick right after class and I never heard from you.”

Clint shrugs, because he’d honestly had a good time. “That was Lraaz, and she’s Pakistani. She’s hard to say no to.”

“She’s bossy,” Dustin comments.

“Well, yeah. ‘Cause she’s the boss,” Clint says, because Dustin’s never been in a class with Lraaz, because he refuses to actually meet any of Clint’s friends, because he has no idea that bossiness is hardly Lraaz’s defining characteristic. She’s the oldest of four. Bossiness is simply genetic.

“What’d you tell her?”

Shoulders hunching, Clint asks, “About what?”

“About where you’ve been lately. That’s what she said to get you to go along with her, right?”

“Yeah, but I didn’t tell her anything.”

Dustin raises an eyebrow. “Really.”

“Really!” Clint insists. Dustin wants to keep them quiet, so he’s keeping them quiet. “She promised not to ask, and she didn’t. We all watched Tremors in the lounge and drank wine coolers, it was not an interrogation. It was fun.”

Dustin hooks his foot around Clint’s ankle and tugs, sending him falling onto the mattress next to him. “I’ll show you fun.”

*

Friday, February 28, 1992

*

“The key,” Dustin says, “Is not to tense up. It’ll hurt more if you tense up. Just relax.”

*

Friday, March 27, 1992

*

The headboard is knocking against the wall.

Dustin’s arms are holding him face-down over the side of the bed, one hand on his hip, the other braced between Clint’s shoulder blades. Clint is trying to concentrate on the feeling of Dustin inside of him, but he can’t help but think about the headboard thumping on the wall separating his dorm from Aaron’s next door, and wondering if it’s bothering Aaron while he’s trying to study.

“The wall,” he manages to eke out between breaths. “You’re gonna dent it…”

“S’ok, s’ok,” Dustin replies breathlessly, shifting his grip on Clint’s back. “Almost there…”

Then Dustin twists his hips, changes the angle, does _something_ , and Clint stops thinking about the wall entirely. They both let out long groans, and then Dustin starts thrusting even harder, slamming the headboard into the wall and making the entire bed shake and creak.

Clint hears Dustin start to make that rasping sound in the back of his throat that means he’s close and feels a deep sense of satisfaction - and then there’s a huge cracking sound as the two back legs of the bed break, and Clint and Dustin go crashing to the floor.

Clint curls up into a ball on the bare linoleum and groans at the sharp pains shooting up his backside. Distantly, he hears Dustin stand up and say, “Oh my god. We actually broke the bed. That was _awesome_.”

“Fuck!” he grinds out through the pain. He feels something wet against his legs, can’t tell if it’s come or-- “Dustin!”

Dustin finally rolls over to look at him, takes in his face and says, “You okay?”

“No! Something’s wrong. I think… am I bleeding?”

“What? Why would you—” Dustin kneels back down next to him. “Here, roll over.”

Clint’s body does not want to uncurl. Hands nudge at his shoulders. “Clint, I can’t look if you don’t roll over.”

He takes a breath and turns on his side, facing away from Dustin, who promptly curses.

“Am I bleeding?”

Dustin’s voice is faint. “Yeah, kind of.”

“Like, kind of kind of? Or kind of a lot?”

“Like I think you need to, uh… get some stitches.”

Clint knocks his forehead twice against the floor. “Shit. Shit.”

After that, it’s a trial to get their clothes back on without, in Clint’s case, too much blood being spread around on everything. He ends up packing two folded-up washcloths into his briefs before pulling on a pair of battered, but thankfully black, sweatpants. He knows how easy it is for blood to seep through.

“I can’t believe girls gotta deal with this every month,” Clint mutters as he shuffles slowly down the hallway to Dustin’s car, hoping not to drip blood on the carpet.

Dustin laughs. “It’s not like they’re actually, you know, hurt, when they’re bleeding.”

Clint thinks Dustin doesn’t know very much about women. “Don’t let Rosita hear you say that.”

Dustin drives him around to the other end of campus to the Academy health center. He pulls over a good 50 yards from the door and puts the car in park, but didn’t turn off the engine. “Here’s your stop.”

Clint glances at him, confused. “You’re not coming in?”

“Nah, man, I gotta go.”

“What do you mean, you gotta go?”

Dustin winces. “Look, I’m sorry, but I can’t be seen bringing you in there like that. It’s not that I don’t want to, it’s just I can’t be around when you’ve got an injury that’s so… obvious.”

Clint can’t help but sit there on his broken ass, staring at Dustin. None of this makes any sense. “You’re seriously not going in with me? You’re my boyfriend and you can’t even come sit in the waiting room while they’re stitching me up from what _you_  did?”

“Look, it’s not that big of a deal, they’ll give you a local and you’ll need all of two stitches, it’ll be fine. It’s not like you need me in there, and I really can’t afford to get that kind of reputation my first year at the Academy, that’s the kind of shit that follows you everywhere you go.”

“And what kind of reputation am I going to get, walking in there with a broken asshole?”

Dustin scowls down at the steering wheel. “Just don’t fucking tell them anything, Clint. I told you when we started this that it was between us, so don’t go and be a bitch about it.”

“Dustin, come on…”

Dustin wordlessly reaches across Clint’s lap, turns the handle, and pushes the door open.

Clint gets the hint. “Fine. See you in class.” He grabs the door frame and heaves himself out of the bucket seat, wondering if he’s left a blood stain and hoping that he has. He steps onto the sidewalk and turns to deliver a parting shot – what he plans to say, he doesn’t know – but Dustin has already closed the passenger side door, and then he’s blazing down the street before Clint can take another painful, limping step.

*

The tear takes six stitches – not two – to close up, and Clint has never been more thankful for a local anesthetic as when Dr. Bazarian administers it on the exam table.

Afterward, when he’s dressed and waiting for the nurse to come back with his prescriptions, Clint lays on his side on the exam table while Dr. Bazarian wheels her stool around to face him. In a gentle tone, she asks if he wants to file an incident report.

“What for?” he asks, flashing back to the broken bed in his dorm room that he’ll probably have to pay to replace, shit.

“For sexual assault.”

It takes a few seconds for him to parse the words, and then he jerks back hard enough to jolt his stitches, and he winces. “Aw, man, no! The bed broke, things got awkward, and so now here I am.”

“I know that it can be—“

“No, I know, I get it, I _know_  that it can be--” he chokes on his breath for a moment, flashes back to a sticky summer night, running through fields with Barney, helping each other push through hedges and jump fences to get away, all because--

“No,” he repeats, trying to cover, because this time the truth really is, “It was… it was consensual. Very consensual. Up until the bed broke. Don’t tell anyone I broke the bed, please.”

Bazarian straightens up, seeming to take him at his word. “Alright, Clint. I did notice during the procedure that there were sexual fluids left at the site of the injury.”

Clint feels himself flush for what has to be the tenth time in the past hour, and covers his face with his hands. “Sexual fluids, oh my god.”

The doctor continues, “So we’re going to do a full STD panel just to rule anything out. Did the condom break?”

Clint looked back up at her, confuses. “Uh, no? We weren’t using one? I mean it’s not like I can get pregnant from this.”

For the next half hour, Clint sits on the exam table in his ratty sweats while a middle-aged health center nurse in Eeyore scrubs reads through three separate informational pamphlets on safe sex, STDs, and the HIV/AIDS epidemic. By the end, he decides that the entire endeavor was pointless, because he is never having sex again.

*

Monday, March 30, 1992

*

Clint leaves his morning class and makes his way to the dining hall and his usual lunch table. Since he’s moving unusually slowly, the other four members his crew are already seated by the time he arrived with his tray, and they watch silently as he eases himself down onto the bench next to Meredith and across from Lraaz, Donna, and Rosita.

“Come on, quit with the eyeballing.”

Lraaz turns her eyeballing level up to six. It’s one of her most advanced skills. “Are you alright?”

“I’m fine. Totally fine.”

“You don’t look fine,” Meredith points out, unhelpfully. “You look distinctly un-fine.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

Rosita smiles at him. It always unnerves him when she smiles like that. “Clint, we’re spies, we’re going to find out what it is, so you might as well tell us.”

He shovels a bite of baked ziti in his mouth and says, “We’re spies-in-training, and you all suck.”

As predicted, Rosita scowls at his bad manners and mutters, “Disgusting.” But then Meredith picks up the ball and runs with it. He thought she was his friend. “You’re sitting pretty carefully there, Clint.” She says, voice dripping with innuendo. “Something happen this weekend we should know about?”

Whatever the expression on his face says, it makes Lraaz straighten suddenly. “Shit. Did something happen? Did he do something?”

He uses his fork to push the ziti around his plate and not look at anyone. “He who?”

“Clint,” Donna breaks in gently. “We know from the hickies you’ve tried to hide that you’ve been seeing someone. We know from the hiding and secrecy that you’re seeing a man. And we know from the look on your face that something happened that you didn’t like.”

Clint tenses up with each word he hears, and all he can think about is Dustin telling him to never, ever, ever tell. “Nothing happened, nobody did anything, nobody’s doing anything ever again ‘cause we broke up, oh my god you guys, would you give it a rest so I can eat now?”

The table lapses into silence as he shoves another forkful of over-baked pasta into his mouth, blatantly ignoring the nausea churning in his belly from the admission. He’s sure glances are being exchanged across the formica, but he ignores them in favor of digging into his mushy broccoli. Eventually, Meredith and Donna made noises about dessert and leave to rejoin the lunch line. Rosita scoots over on the bench so that she and Lraaz can stare him down side-by-side.

Someone nudges him with their foot, and that someone follows it up with, “Clint, you’re freaking me out, here.”

Rosita nods in agreement.

“I hate it when you both team up against me. I want that added to the record. It’s unnerving.”

They stare back at him.

He sighs and puts down his fork. “Yes, I was seeing someone. No, nothing happened. We broke the bed. We got in an argument about it. We broke up. That’s all that happened. Really.”

They both frown like they don’t believe him. Lraaz says, “It doesn’t look like that’s all that happened. You look like you’re in pain. And I don’t mean the emotional pain of a breakup, Clint.”

“I’m not in emotional pain.”

Rosita scoffs. “I’m going to ignore that blatant lie, and also point out that your shoulders are tight, you’re sitting very carefully, and it took you twice as long as usual to get here after class. That all indicates physical injury of some kind, Clint, and you know that. Don’t lie to us.”

Clint shoves his tray to the side. The minimal amount of food he’s eaten sits like a lead weight in his stomach as he thinks about his weekend. He has one more class to sit through in the afternoon; then he can go back to his room and lie back down on the broken bed he’d propped up with bricks from the courtyard and pretend none of this ever happened. “It hurt when we broke the bed. That’s all.”

“It hurt,” Lraaz repeats flatly.

“…So I had to go to the health center and get stitches, which is why I’m in pain and sitting weird and sweating and whatever else they’re teaching you in Human Lie Detector 101, and that’s really, really all so can we please shut up and never speak of this again?”

Rosita glances at Lraaz, then asks, “Do you want us to kill him?”

“And by kill, we mean threaten and humiliate in a public fashion,” Lraaz amends.

“You don’t even who he is, that’s the whole point of a _secret boyfriend_.”

“Dustin Hoernecke,” they say together.

"Okay, that’s creepy and weird.”

"You’ve been mooning over him since the first time he pinned you in class, and he’s even more transparent. It wasn’t difficult to figure out. ”  
He put his head down on the table, and keeps it there until Meredith and Donna return with ice cream. Someone pets his hair. After the weekend he’s had, it’s nice.

*

Tuesday, April 7, 1992

*

Clint’s dorm phone buzzes after midnight on a Tuesday, and it takes Clint a good two minutes of slapping the headset in his sleep before he realizes it’s not his alarm. When he finally wakes up enough to answer, tell whoever’s on the line to hang on, and put in his aids, he gets to hear Nick Fury say without preamble, “I hear your grades are slipping.”

Still half asleep, all he can get out is, “It’s… uh… what?”

“I hear you got yourself a boyfriend and you’re letting him distract you from your classes.”

Okay, faced with the gravitas with which Fury delivered that statement, Clint can kind of see why Dustin likes to keep things to himself. In any event, he’s certainly awake now. “I don’t have a boyfriend.”

“Really? Because this is the nineties, SHIELD doesn’t give a shit who you’re sleeping with as long as it doesn’t interfere with your work. Hell, whenever another agency drops an agent like a hot potato ‘cause they got outed, we’re usually first in line to scoop them up. But that’s neither here nor there. The point is, your grades—”

Clint flops back onto the pillows. “Is this what having a parent is like? Because I gotta say, I’m not really feeling it.”

“Sounds like that C-minus in deflection is well-earned.”

Silence.

“Tell me what’s bugging you,” Fury asks, as gently as Clint’s ever heard him.

Clint takes a deep breath. “…I don’t have a boyfriend.”

“So you’ve said.”

“He broke up with me because he was afraid of what people would say if they knew about us.”

“Ah,” Fury says.

Clint rolls over onto his side and curls around his pillow, the phone tucked under his cheek. “Rosita thinks he’s a scumbag, but Lraaz thinks he’s just scared.”

“And what does Clint think?”

“I don’t know… The thing is, in the circus, guys said a lot of stuff, you know. But at the same time, George and Jim were there and they had been together for a hundred years. And my… the other guys were always going home with the townies all the time, or fooling around, or something, and if there ever was any trouble it was always the townies that started it. But then in Cleveland, the people at the Dreniks’ church, and the guys at the range… and now Dustin…”

Fury sighs. “You weren’t expecting it.”

“No. I just figured… you know, he was… you know… and I didn’t think there’d be a problem if we…” Clint trails off.

Fury takes a few moments before he says, carefully, “Couple years ago, you were wandering all over the Midwest with your black girlfriend, daring the bastards to make a comment. You coulda gotten both of you killed doing that.”

“You think I didn’t know that?” Clint asks, after a moment, jaw tight.

“Was the fear worth it?”

“Yes.” He says it without hesitation, because, “It was Jackie.”

“But you _were_  scared.”

“Of course I was. _It was Jackie_.”

“Sounds like your boy, here, was scared, too. Two men running around together isn’t exactly the safest thing you can do, either. Bigots are assholes no matter what they’re being bigoted about. And not everyone deals with their fear by scowling it into submission like some people I could name.”

“He didn’t act like he was scared. He acted like he was….” Clint paused. “Embarrassed. Ashamed. Of me.”

“And if I tell you that’s not true, and that he was definitely just scared out of his wits, you’re not gonna believe a damn word that comes out of my mouth,” Fury states plainly, like he’s tired.

Clint shrugs, even though Fury can’t see it. Maybe Dustin _was_  scared. Obviously, Clint wasn’t worth it.

Fury sighs heavily into the receiver, and Clint can hear it rushing across the plastic. “You know, you might not appreciate this right now, but you’ve ended up with the unusual privilege of having not grown up in a typical American household. It’s given you a lot of perspective on things that other people take for granted. Of course, it also means that you can’t see through all the bullshit that other people, like your boyfriend, get wrapped up in.”

“Why do they let it get to them?” Clint asks.

“Let? Who lets something get to them? People are human, they get bothered by stupid shit. You cut your hair yet?”

“What? No.”

“Well, there you go. Get your grades back up, you’re making me look bad.”

*

Monday, April 13, 1992

*

Clint returns to his hand-to-hand class, and manages to avoid Dustin for all of four days until they’re paired together for a bout in front of god and everybody. Everyone’s faces are lit up in anticipation – a match between the two of them was always entertaining for all. Except now, instead of a thrill of arousal shooting down to his groin, Clint has a tight coil of anxiety twisting in his stomach. Dustin looks… about the same. They haven’t spoken since the day Dustin abandoned him at the health center.

They stand to face each other on the mat. Dustin scowls at him, and Clint’s just… done.

The great thing about fighting Dustin was the teasing contact, the way a bout was partly a dance, partly a competition, and a hundred percent foreplay. Clint doesn’t want any of that, doesn’t want to touch Dustin, doesn’t want to be touched. Their bouts used to last anywhere from ninety seconds to three minutes, depending on how much fun they were having.

The instructor tells them to begin, and Clint has Dustin pinned to the floor – knee in the small of his back and arm twisted hard behind him – in three moves. After a stunned silence, Dustin taps the mat. “Twelve seconds, flat,” the instructor announces.

Clint stands and returns to his spot next to Donna. Her elbow brushes his intentionally. Dustin struggles to get up from the floor; Clint doesn’t look at him, and the class moves on.

*

Dustin corners him in the locker room after class. “Did you tell anyone what happened?” he asks.

Clint ignores him and concentrates on closing up his locker without accidentally leaving something inside in his rush to escape.

“Hey, look at me,” Dustin says, louder, grabbing his arm.

Clint spins, and has Dustin pinned against the lockers without a second thought. Dustin stares at him in shock. “What the hell, Clint?”

“Six stitches,” Clint says. It’s all he can think to say. “Luckily for you, the HIV test came back negative, otherwise you’d have Rosita sharpening her knives at you.”

“I fucking told you not to tell anyone what happened,” Dustin grits out.

“I’m glad to hear you’re so concerned about my health, as opposed to your sterling reputation,” Clint spits back. “I didn’t have to tell anybody anything. They already knew, because they’re fucking SHIELD agents, Dustin.”

Dustin pales, and Clint shoves away from him. Dustin asks, “Why are you being such a bitch about this?”

“Why are you such a shit boyfriend?” Clint demands back. He grabs his duffel and storms out of the locker room, nearly running straight into Donna waiting for him on the other side of the door.

“Let’s go,” he says, when she pauses to glance from his face to the doorway behind him.

Because when push comes to shove, his friends are the best, Donna sets off down the hall at a brisk walk, and Clint follows close behind, glancing over his shoulder once or twice. They round the corner, and then another corner after that, at which point Donna slows down and stops him with a gentle hand on his chest. He slumps sideways against the wall, and she leans next to him, mirroring his posture.

She reaches up and brushes her fingers across his left cheek. They come away wet. She repeats the gesture on the other side, and then cups her hand on the back of his neck and threads her fingers through his hair. Her expression is gentle, concerned, and everything he wishes Dustin’s had been at any point between the debacle in the bedroom and today.

“Should we have Rosita kill him?” she asks after a moment.

He shakes his head, careful not to dislodge her hand. “Jackie wouldn’t’ve done this, she wouldn’t’ve acted like this,” he says, brokenly.

He can see the confusion cross her face. Not once in the past two years, amid all the discussions they’ve all had about their lives and their pasts and their families, has Clint brought up Jackie’s existence. Because he doesn’t want them to judge him for choosing her, for having a baby with her, for losing her, for not being able to find her, for not being able to let her go.

Because it was easier to be distracted by Dustin Hoernecke’s sparkle and smile, to concentrate on exploring a side of himself he’d only had hints of before.

Because dealing with Dustin’s issues is preferable to thinking about his own.

Because he’s trying to move on, but everything he does just reminds him of what he’s lost.

*

Dustin had been at the top of the class. After Clint pins him three more times – all in under twenty seconds – he’s moved out of that section and placed in another class comprised entirely of third-year students. He doesn’t stay long before he’s moved up again. The better he is, the less anyone will touch him.

*

Friday, May 8, 1992

*

Clint spends his Fridays studying, now – actual studying, like he should have been doing rather than getting humiliated by Dustin six ways to Sunday. The others have tried to engage him after Friday night dinner, to go to some party or another, to drive into the city for a movie, but he just can’t be bothered to care. This week, though, Meredith peels off early to go spend quality time with her partners, and Lraaz and Rosita get into it over the place of liberation theology in South American revolutionary factions. Donna disappears mid-argument, and returns with two slices of pie, already boxed to go. She proceeds to drag him out of the dining hall while the other two continue to bicker over how useful some cardinal is to US foreign policy.

Clint has every intention of returning to his room, but Donna has her arm locked in his, and with the promise of impending pie, leads him back to her dorm. Once inside, she closes the door behind them, sets the pie slices down on her desk, and proceeds to tackle him onto the bed.

Clint freezes underneath her. “What the—”

Oblivious to his protest, she nudges him with her knees and elbows, arranging him on the bed until he’s leaning half-upright against the pillows and headboard, and she’s tucked in the V between his legs with her back against his chest, her rear rubbing against his groin. He really, really doesn’t want to be aroused right now.

“I don’t want to have sex with you,” he says. “Lraaz will kill me. Rosita will kill me. Meredith will laugh at me.

“I don’t sleep with people, your virtue is safe,” she replies.

“Then why is this happening right now?”

“Human contact is important,” she responds. “You’ve been a bear to deal with since you stopped getting contact from Dustin.”

“Don’t you mean, since I stopped getting sex from—him?”

She shrugs in his arms. “Contact is contact. Doesn’t have to be sexual in order to be good for you.”

A lot of questions and contradictions run through his head. “I don’t understand,” he says, distinctly uncomfortable on a number of levels.

“Just relax,” she says. “And hand me the remote. If you can hold still through an episode of Gilligan’s Island, I’ll let you have your pie.”

*

Clint falls asleep after the pie, and wakes up the next morning to find Donna an arm’s length away, smiling at him from her pillow.

“[Breakfast]?” she asks? _Feel better?_ he hears.

It’s the first time he’s woken up next to someone in years; the memory of waking up next to Jackie still aches, but it’s duller, now. Donna isn’t, and won’t ever be, his girlfriend. But waking up like this is still good.

“Yeah,” he says, and reaches for his hearing aids.

*

Wednesday, June 24, 1992

*

Clint lets the phone ring out the first time. Then, a few minutes later, it starts up again. After five minutes of endless ringing, he finally puts in his left hearing aid and picks up the receiver, and Fury asks without preamble, “Still depressed about the boyfriend?”

“No,” Clint lies.

“Sure,” Fury agrees. “Wanna learn to fly a jet?”

Clint has gotten out of the habit of staring at his phone when Fury suggests something ridiculous. Instead, he asks, “Are you offering so that I won’t be depressed anymore?”

“I thought you said you weren’t depressed?” Fury asks innocently.

“Come on, Nick.”

“You start next week. You can thank me later.”

*

Saturday, June 26, 1993

*

By the time they graduate the Academy, Meredith has broken up and made up with her partners a grand total of six times. Rosita has learned how to hide her scowl, but will still wield honesty like a scalpel (it’ll hurt, but then it’ll heal better). Lraaz hasn’t changed a bit. And Donna has finally convinced him to cut his hair short enough that there’s no hiding his hearing aids.

He thinks about ordering the next set in purple.

On graduation day, Clint takes his shiny new Level Two clearance and does a records search for Jackie, and for Bailey. Maybe it’s the limits of his clearance level, maybe he’s not spelling something correctly, but nothing comes up.

***

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Find me on tumblr!](http://jhscdood.tumblr.com)


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to [Westgate](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Harkpad/pseuds/Westgate) for being an awesome beta and friend!
> 
> Warnings for minor violence, discussions of using deadly force in the service of SHIELD, mentions of the 1997 NFL season, and sex.

1994

*

At Ops, they warned him what it’s like, the first time you take someone out. “Take out,” that’s always the way they say it – not kill. They dance around it. Make you distance yourself from it, that when it finally happens you can put it away in a box in your mind and forget about it.

Clint is very, very aware of this.

Clint’s first missions as an official agent are surveillance. SHIELD brings him in any time they want to look over the shoulder of suspicious-looking scientists, researchers, programmers, hackers – anyone who looks like they might be up to something fishy behind their research grants. They have him sneak inside labs to place bugs, scale un-scaleable buildings to plant cameras and, sometimes, literally look over someone’s shoulder – through a scope, 500 yards away – and figure out if what they’re doing is kosher, or decidedly not.

The first time he’s caught out on one of these types of missions, he slips away as soon as he’s spotted, and his mark never finds out who he is or who he works for. Blake congratulates him for his speedy escape and, later, chastises him in private for getting seen at all.

The second time Clint is caught out mid-surveillance, it’s by five private security guys who burst through the Roxxon laboratory doors while he’s mid-bug-planting. Because he’s a SHIELD agent – and a fucking good one – he makes it out with nothing more than a few bruises on his forearms and shins. He leaves the five guards unconscious on the floor while he zips down the exterior wall of the building, steals a car, steals another car, and meets up with the rest of the team at the extraction point.

Blake berates him for not knowing about the five guards before he went in. “Can’t you fucking read, Barton?”

Clint tenses, tries not to shift into a defensive posture. “There were five guards for a three-story building. They shouldn’t have spotted me, and they definitely shouldn’t have all shown up together at once. Something must have tipped them off.”

“Your job is to _not_ tip them off.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. Sir.”

*

Wednesday, February 9, 1994

*

Blake is assigned Clint’s first Supervising Officer because Nick Fury is a busy man who doesn’t have time anymore to drag Level Two agents on Level Six operations. Fury assures Clint that they’ll work together more once Clint has moved up the ladder a bit. But for now, Clint needs to work on trusting more men.

“I don’t have a problem trusting men,” Clint objects immediately, stomach tightening. “I trust you.”

“I don’t count,” Fury replies.

“It doesn’t have anything to do with Agent Blake being a man, I just think I’d get along better with Agent Hand as my S.O.”

Fury snorts. “There you go. Your four closest friends at the Academy were women, you consistently scored six points higher in any class taught by a woman, and you hyperventilate every time your male S.O. looks like he wants to kick your ass.”

“I do not hyperventilate!”

“I don’t care. Whatever your deal is with men in positions of authority, you need to get a handle on it before you start getting sent on priority ops. Trust can be the difference between success and failure. You can get started with Agent Blake.”

*

Tuesday, June 7, 1994

*

In June, they meet up with another team to provide backup on a slightly more complex surveillance mission: Agent Oliver is flirting his way into an office building he should not be able to get into through flirtation, and yet it’s somehow working. His S.O., Agent Chaimson, is in the van running things with Agent Blake. Clint is on the roof of the building across the way, staring down his scope into the office Oliver is trying to get into.

Apparently they can’t go in at night, can’t rappel down the side of the building, can’t do anything in the dark and quiet in order to get what they’re after. It has to be during regular work hours. It has to be Oliver practicing his infiltration skills. It has to be Clint, watching from afar as Oliver charms his way through doorway after doorway.

He had a beard this morning, a scruffy one that made him look kind of… dorky.

He doesn’t have one now.

Clint waits and watches, and he never has to shoot out a window or trigger a fire alarm or take any other measures to distract and divert so that Oliver can get away unscathed. In the end, Oliver walks out the front door - Clint watching his back the entire time - heads down the block, and gets on a bus going downtown. Clint knows he’ll get off at a random spot and make himself disappear.

After giving Oliver a fifteen minute head start, Clint packs up his kit and heads down to the ground. Blake and Chaimson swing around in the van to pick him up. After a brief check-in, the two men ignore him as they, too, head downtown.

An hour later, they’re checking into a mid-range hotel next to the conference center. Twenty minutes after that, they’re getting a table at the hotel restaurant. Blake and Chaimson argue over who gets to expense the dinner, while Oliver rolls his eyes and Clint tries to avoid staring at the dimples that appear on Oliver’s cheeks every time he smiles.

As they go to sit down across from each other, Oliver’s foot knocks into Clint’s knee. “Sorry,” Oliver says, and smiles.

It’s halfway through the meal when Clint realizes what that meant. It’s one of the things Dustin told him about, way back when.

Eyes on his fries, Clint reaches out his foot and gently taps Oliver’s leg. Oliver shoots him a small smile, with just a slightly raised eyebrow. It’s the most subtle come-hither look Clint’s ever had sent in his direction, and he doesn’t know what to do other than try to return it. From Oliver’s expression, his attempt is more amusing than sexy.

The two Supervising Officers have spent the entire meal rehashing, in fine detail, the 1988 Slam Dunk contest between Dominique Wilkins and Michael Jordan, which Oliver and Clint were obviously not old enough to appreciate at the time, but need to hear about for the sake of the future of the human race. When all of their plates are down to crumbs and the little pieces of lettuce that no one eats, Oliver asks, “You guys wanna continue this at the bar up the road?”

It’s a tradition whenever SO’s and their trainees get together - the trainees invite everyone out, and the SO’s politely decline with something along the line of, “You kids go have fun.”

This evening isn’t any different. Chaimson and Blake share a look and pass over a twenty dollar bill to each of them.

“Have fun,” Chaimson says to Oliver.

“Don’t be an idiot,” Blake says to Clint.

“Man, they always make me feel like a teenager again when they do the passing out money thing,” Oliver says once they’re outside, taking deep breaths in the open air. Blake and Chaimson had both taken full advantage of their seats in the smoking section.

Clint’s gotten used to ignoring the sting he feels every time someone brings up their normal adolescence; he just agrees, “Yeah, it sucks.”

Oliver sticks both of his hands in his pockets and, turning to face Clint on the sidewalk, rocks back and forth on his heels a couple of times before asking, “So, you wanna try that bar?”

“Sure,” he responds, charmed by Oliver’s clumsy attempts to be charming when not on a mission. “Whatever you want.”

Oliver’s eyes light up. “Yeah?”

“Wouldn’t’ve said yes if I wasn’t interested,” Clint says, and Oliver grins.

“Awesome.”

Twenty minutes later, they’re ordering Bud Ices at the bar and complaining about their SO’s. Twenty minutes after that, they’re getting mickey grenades and complaining about their instructors at Ops. Oliver was a year behind Clint, and thinks Agent White was an okay guy, if a bit tough.

Clint still isn’t sure what bothers him so much about Agent White, but he lets it pass because Oliver’s hand is on his knee and slowly sliding upward.

It’s another twenty minutes, but then Oliver is leaning closely enough for his fingers to lightly brush the seam of Clint’s jeans. The first faint touch on his balls through the fabric makes Clint’s whole body flush, and then Oliver asks, “Want to head out?”

“Where to?” Clint manages to respond.

“Just out the back,” Oliver replies. “You’ll see.”

They both stand, slide their now-crumpled twenties under their empty drink glasses, and head out the front door. Clint follows as Oliver leads him around the corner, then around another corner. Then Oliver takes a few steps into the alley behind the bar, grabs Clint, and pulls him into a little alcove - a blind corner that only a goddamn SHIELD agent would see. He pushes Clint against the wall and kisses him.

Clint immediately rolls to put Oliver’s back against the wall instead, and kisses back. His skin feels flushed again, from alcohol and arousal and the fact that, hidden though they are, they are still out in the open air. Clint can see the sky, hear noise from the bar, and feel Oliver’s hands reaching under the waistband of his jeans to squeeze the bare skin of his ass.

“I want you to suck me,” Oliver says when they pause for breath.

“Okay,” Clint says. The asphalt looks clean enough in this spot; he goes to his knees as Oliver unzips and pulls out his cock. It’s longer than Dustin’s was, which has Clint a little worried. He ignores the unease and takes Oliver’s cock into his mouth. He slides up and down a few times without sucking, just to get it nice and wet. Then he takes a deep breath through his nose, holds it, and pushes his head forward to take all of it into the back of his throat. Oliver gasps above him and Clint pulls back, then moves forward to deepthroat him again.

Oliver’s hips jerk suddenly, pushing him deeper into Clint’s mouth, and Clint tries to relax but it’s not enough because Oliver’s cock is too long, he’s not used to that much, and he’s choking and trying to hold it back and keep going and Oliver is pulling away now. Now Oliver’s hands are on his jaw, tilting his head up to make eye contact, and Oliver asks, “Who the hell taught you to suck cock?”

The blush returns in full force, and Clint diverts his eyes away from Oliver’s, focuses on the corner of the alcove behind him. This was how Dustin wanted it, so this is what Clint learned to do. But he can’t find the words to tell Oliver that.

“Okay,” Oliver says. “Okay. That was good, yeah? But maybe, put your hand here...”

 He moves Clint’s hand to wrap around the base of his cock. “And jack it like this…”

His hand wraps around Clint’s hand wrapped around his cock and gently squeezes while moving halfway up and down. “And then suck on just, just the head, okay?”

Oliver takes his hand away, and Clint closes his mouth on the head of Oliver’s cock and gives a gentle suck. He squeezes his hand and pulls forward, adds a tentative swipe of his tongue over Oliver’s slit, and now Oliver’s catching his breath and saying, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, like that, exactly.”

Clint pulls away and, just to check, asks, “Good?”

“Great,” Oliver says. “Just, uh, don’t go too hard and, you know, have fun. Try stuff. Whatever.”

“Okay,” Clint says, and gets back down to business, focusing on giving Oliver what he asks for. He alternates the speed of his hand, the pressure he squeezes with. He sucks hard, then sucks gently, then traces patterns with the tip of his tongue, then just blows gently across the slit - that last one makes Oliver roll back onto his heels for a moment, then roll forward again.

Pretty soon he finds a rhythm that seems to work, and a few minutes later Oliver is pushing Clint’s head away, panting, “Hard, with just your hand, yeah, like that,” and he’s coming into Clint’s hand.

Clint sits back on his heels and looks up at Oliver. Oliver opens his eyes and looks down at him, and says, “ _You_ are a quick learner.”

When Clint just shrugs - because how are you supposed to react when someone says you aren’t as bad at cocksucking as they thought? - Oliver squats down in front of him and says, “I didn’t mean-- I meant that it was good. I liked it. I’d like to do that for you. Is that okay?”

Oliver looks so earnest and sincere about it that Clint’s spirits lift a bit, and he asks, “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Oliver says. “Here, switch spots with me.”

They scurry around their little hiding spot until Oliver is on his knees in front of Clint. He unbuckles Clint’s pants and draws down his fly, but leaves his underwear in place, and then he’s just… using his lips and tongue to tease Clint’s flagging erection through the thin cotton of his boxers.

It feels strange and different and surprisingly erotic, and it keeps going until the fabric is wet and sticking to Clint’s cock, and Clint can feel every touch of tongue through the texture of the fabric. Oliver opens his mouth to take the head in - _still_ ensconced in fabric - and sucks. The lack of a complete seal makes air rush in through the cotton to wrap around his cock... and that’s the last thought that Clint has for several more minutes.

Clint is far less of a stranger to receiving blow jobs than he is to giving them. But after Oliver finally pulls the fabric away and swallows him down bare, Clint goes weak at the knees and comes almost immediately.

Oliver stands and does up Clint’s pants for him, tucks his shirt in for him as well, because Clint’s lost all ability to move, it feels like. Oliver kisses him again, his mouth open against Clint’s, and then asks, “Okay?”

Clint smiles, and is about to answer when the slam of a car door nearby makes them both jump, then laugh. They scuttle out of the alcove and, still laughing, head back to the hotel.

“I’m headed out with Chaimson in the morning,” Oliver says as they’re riding the elevator up to their rooms, his hand in the small of Clint’s back. “Can I call you?”

“Sure,” Clint says.

*

Oliver calls him a half a dozen times. Sometimes just to talk, once in the middle of the night to initiate an awkward attempt at phone sex.

Clint never calls Oliver. He’d never had to call Jackie because he lived with her and they didn’t have phones, anyway. And Dustin was always the one telling him when they should meet, when he should come over. He just doesn’t know _how_ , doesn’t know the right steps to take to keep the contact going. What if he calls when Oliver is busy? What if Oliver doesn’t want to talk? What if Clint’s bothering him?

Clint just lets Oliver initiate, and when Oliver stops calling, Clint doesn’t call back. He doesn’t want to be a bother.

*

After a year of surveillance missions – only a few of which go wrong, and none of them as badly as the Roxxon job – Clint’s moved up the ladder, and assigned to back-up the strike team based in Los Angeles. He starts running practice missions for every possible mission condition. Storming a warehouse. Storming a one-room cabin. Exfiltrating an injured person from an underground bunker. Getting 30 hostages out of a burning building while under enemy fire. Hijacking a helicopter. Hijacking an oil tanker.

Blake snaps orders, snarls questions, demands answers, and always seems to know the exact moment when someone screws up. But that’s all he’s ever done. The trainees go out to the bar after they get back from missions sometimes, but no one taps Clint’s foot under the table again or puts their hand on his knee, and he isn’t sent on any more missions with Chaimson and Oliver.

When the team gets pulled into a _real_ mission, Clint is… surprisingly okay. Well, _he’s_ surprised. Everyone else seems to be taking it for granted that he’s okay, that he’s a highly-trained and extremely capable SHIELD agent.

It’s… disconcerting.

He has to shoot people on this mission. His orders are to disable, and he takes shots to incapacitate – groin, armpit, calf, dominant hand. It’s pretty easy to slow someone down with an arrow without causing terminal damage.

He knows every single shot he takes, and he knows he’s been lucky so far to not have had to “take someone out.”

Yeah. Take out. He rolls his eyes every time he hears it. Take out, like on a date.

Everything changes a few months later on a mission to the backwoods of Texas. It’s a standard hostage-rescue situation, like they’ve practiced twenty times before, and everything is going smoothly at first. Until it happens.

It’s a scene straight out of an action movie, and if Clint weren’t in the middle of it, he would laugh. One of their kidnappers is using a hostage (Trevor Greathouse, fourteen, tall for his age) as a body shield. He’s got his arms around the kid, a gun pressed under the boy’s chin. Clint can’t shoot the man’s gun hand. If the impact doesn’t cause the gun to go off, the arrow will go straight through the flesh and dig into Trevor’s lung. Shooting the non-dominant hand will put an arrow into Trevor’s liver. The only part of the man’s body not blocked by Trevor’s is his face.

Blake is shouting at him, and Clint takes the shot.

*

Thursday, July 13, 1995

*

“You do realize you joined an elite paramilitary organization, right?” Fury’s voice comes in strong over the phone line, and Clint tucks the handset deeper into his shoulder as he curls up in his seat. “Shooting to injure isn’t always going to be appropriate or right, as I’m sure you figured out today. Kid would be dead if it weren’t for you taking that shot.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“You know.” Fury’s voice drips with doubt.

“I just… I never actually killed anybody before.”

There’s a beat of silence.

“What?” he asks, already suspicious.

“That’s… not entirely accurate,” is the vague response he gets. Clint straightens up.

“No, it really is. I know where every single one of my arrows ends up, and it’s never been a kill shot before today.”

“You’re right, of course.”

“Then what am I not being accurate about?” Clint snaps.

There’s a sigh, the kind Fury only lets out when he has to tell Clint something horrible. A lengthy pause, and then Fury says, slowly, carefully, “This may be the first time you’ve taken someone out with an arrow, but it’s not the first time you’ve taken someone out.”

“What?”

“The surveillance mission at Roxxon, last year? Those five guards got the jump on you.”

“Yeah, and I knocked them out,” Clint replies, thinking back on the mission. “Didn’t even draw blood while I was doing it.”

“You knocked them out, and one of them didn’t wake up. Blunt force trauma to the head caused a intracranial hemorrhage. He went into a coma and died two days later.”

His stomach drops. “I…”

“This is SHIELD, Barton. We protect the world from _all_ threats. Sometimes that means killing people, as you figured out today. Most times it’s gonna be bad people, or people hired by bad people to do bad things. Twice so far, you’ve managed to stop them from doing something worse. You gonna be able to do it again?”

Clint nods.

“Is that the sound of you nodding?”

He swallows. “Yeah.”

“Alright, then.”

*

Friday, July 14, 1995

*

“Have you killed anybody yet?”

There’s a long pause on the other end of the line. Then, “Clint, I’m going take a moment to pretend that the terribly offensive thing you just said was said with a lot more sensitivity and tact.”

“Sorry, Lraaz.”

“Have you been going around asking people this?”

“…Maybe.”

“It’s not a question you ask people, Clint. Everybody has their own cross to bear, and it’s not your place to ask how heavy theirs is.”

*

Wednesday, July 19, 1995

*

“Lraaz says you’re having guilt issues,” Rosita says in lieu of a greeting when Clint answers his phone. With his new in-the-ear aids, it’s still weird for him not to flip the telephone switch, and he keeps reaching for it, still, every time his phone rings.

“Am not,” he replies defensively. He turns off his electric kettle so that it doesn’t whistle and interrupt Rosita while she’s talking, and sits down at his desk.

“Guilt about killing people.”

“Am not,” he repeats, leaning his chair back so that he can stare up at the ceiling while taking whatever Rosita decides is appropriate to dish out.

He can hear her scowl. “Stop being petulant, it stopped being cute once you hit drinking age. Have you been internalizing what happens on your missions?”

He leans the chair back forward with a thump. “No.”

“Don’t lie to me, you internalize everything and you know it. You need to learn to compartmentalize.”

Clint sighs. “Why did you call me, Rosita? To make me feel bad for feeling bad about doing my job?”

“So you did take someone out, then?”

“Yes, but it turns out it wasn’t the first time, but I didn’t know about the first time until the second time happened, and so now there’s _two_ , and I just feel weird—”

“I snapped a man’s neck with my thighs last week,” she interrupts casually, and Clint chokes. “Do you think I’m a terrible person for doing that?”

“What?” he manages, after a moment.

“Do you think I’m a bad person for that?” she repeats, unnaturally calm. Waiting for his response.

“No! I mean, it was for a mission, right? You weren’t just mad at someone?”

Now he can definitely hear her scowl. “I don’t go around killing people with my thighs off the clock, Clint.”

“I believe you.”

“It’s supposed to feel weird. If it feels good, that runs the risk of becoming a problem for SHIELD, having psychopaths running around killing people just because they can and they don’t mind it.”

“I mind it,” he admits quietly.

“Good.” Her tone is resolute. “Concentrate on following orders, then, and trust that they’ll only ever tell you to use lethal force when it’s absolutely necessary.”

“I have to trust the system?”

“Jesus, no. But try trusting your SO. At some point. Once. Just to try it.”

*

Sunday, July 23, 1995

*

“Agent Jones’ phone,” a male voice says when the call connects. It’s a nice voice - medium range, bit of an attractive rasp - but it doesn’t distract Clint from the fact that someone other than Meredith is answering her phone.

“Where’s Meredith?” He asks, trying not to sound rude and probably failing miserably.

The man’s tone turns self-satisfied and smug. “She’s currently indisposed; may I take a message?”

“Indisposed meaning she’s in the shower or indisposed meaning you’re busy hiding her body?”

“What kind of murderer answer’s their victim’s phone?” The man asks, and now he’s clearly amused. “Just seems like poor strategy.”

“A dumbass murderer is still a murderer,” Clint grouses, embarrassed by the fact that he’s clearly interrupting Meredith having fun with someone who, knowing her taste, is clever, attractive, and hilarious. “You going to put her on?”

“Sure, hang on.” There’s a pause. “Got a really suspicious guy on the phone for you.”

“That’d be Clint,” Meredith’s voice rings out. “Thanks, Phil. Hello?”

“Hey, sorry to bug you.”

Meredith laughs. “Hey, Captain Existential Crisis! How are you? Hang on, let me get my prayer beads and you can tell me all your woes.”

*

Clint works with the LA strike team for three years, and tries not to keep a running tally in his head.

He fails.

*

Monday, June 30, 1997

*

Clint is sprawled halfway under the quinjet they’d just landed at the LA base after a mission. He’d been piloting, and while all the sensors said that the landing gear was functioning correctly, something had still felt slightly off when he touched down.

He took engineering classes at Ops - though to be fair, they were more geared toward helping him make constant improvements to his quiver and arrows without having to run his ideas through scientists every time. And he’s very, very familiar with all of SHIELD’s vehicles for air, land and sea. Running diagnostics in the cockpit hadn’t come up with a solution, so he feels perfectly justified crouching under the front wheel, adjustable wrench in one hand and maglight in the other.

“What are you doing?” A voice asks from above. Clint ducks his head out from under the landing gear and peers up at a young white man with green eyes, red hair, and cheekbones that could launch a thousand ships.

“Checking the landing gear. Felt funny when I touched down today,” Clint says. The man standing next to him has the look of an engineer - grease on his hands, three different wrenches sticking out of his pocket, a possessive look in his eye. Clint took enough engineering classes at Ops to know what’s about to come next.

“Did you run a diagnostic?”

“Yeah,” Clint replies defensively. “It didn’t find anything wrong.”

“Huh,” the man replies. He crouches down next to Clint, now, and looks up at the jet’s undercarriage. His uniform says T. Maguire. “Then it must be something the computer can’t detect. Have you ever felt it before? What did it feel like?”

Clint glances at him in surprise, because he’s been fully expecting to be told nothing’s wrong, stop playing around with things he can’t understand. Instead, Maguire, whose first name turns out to be Tim, spends the rest of the afternoon going over all of the landing gear on the jet with him, piece by piece. They don’t find anything obviously wrong, but Tim puts in a service ticket for the jet to go through a full maintenance before it flies again.

“You’re the pilot,” Tim says as they’re walking out of the hangar. Apparently Tim’s shift ended over an hour ago. “If you say something’s wrong with the jet, then something’s wrong with the jet.”

“Thanks, man,” Clint says, preening a little bit at the credit Tim is giving him. SciOps graduates always seem to think the Ops graduates are of Neandertal intelligence. “I appreciate it.”

“You can show me your appreciation by buying me a beer,” Tim replies.

Clint stumbles.

“Or not,” Tim says, wryly.

“No, yeah, um, sure,” Clint says. “I can do that.”

Now Tim is grinning. “Smooth.”

“Shut up.”

*

Clint winds up buying Tim two beers over the course of two hours at a local sports bar, and then they both have to go back to base to get ready for early morning work shifts. Sometimes Clint isn’t sure if they aren’t just two guys having beers; then sometimes Tim glances over at him, and Clint is pretty sure it’s more than that.

Somehow, they end up going back to the bar the following Thursday, and Tim buys their beers, and then they go home separately. Then, regular Thursday nights become a thing. Sometimes their knees knock together under the booth, and sometimes their hands brush as they share a basket of fries or nachos or something else that would have their SHIELD nutritionists pitching a fit.

*

Sunday, August 31, 1997

*

After two months, Tim invites Clint to come over to his on-base apartment on a Sunday.

“What do I do?” Clint asks frantically as soon as Meredith answers her phone.

“You’re gonna need to be a little more specific there, but in general the answer usually is, do whatever the hell you want,” she drawls. Then she adds, as an afterthought, “So long as it’s legal.”

Clint groans, and bites out, “I have a date, but I don’t know if it’s a friend-date or a date-date.”

“Ah,” she says. “When is your Schroedinger’s date?”

Clint glances at the clock on his dresser. It still has a dent in the corner from the time he threw it against the wall for buzzing too loudly on a bad Monday morning. “I have to head over to his place in twenty minutes.”

“And you’re calling me _now_?”

“Meredith!”

“Okay, okay,” she says. “Okay. Have you had sex with him?”

“What? No! Otherwise I’d know what kind of date this was.”

“You never know, some people are that clueless,” she says, and Clint can’t help but assume she’s talking about him.

“Thanks.”

“You’re welcome. So I’m assuming you  haven’t kissed or touched or had any sort of discussion, you’ve just been hanging out and dancing around each other while exchanging longing glances?”

Clint hesitates, then replies, “Maybe.”

“Ooookay, well.” She huffs, pauses, and then says, “Since you’re on limited time, here is my advice: Assume it’s a friend-date and relax. If he wants to make a move, he’ll make a move. Don’t expect anything. But, just to be on the safe side, shave what needs to be shaved, clean what needs to be cleaned, and don’t eat anything with onions beforehand. Got it?”

Clint isn’t sure how he’ll be able to relax when there’s a possibility of getting his hands on Tim’s biceps, but the rest of it is certainly worth a shot. “Thanks, Mer.”

“Good luck!” she crows, and hangs up.

Half an hour later, Clint is knocking on Tim’s door, six-pack of Coors in-hand, with his teeth brushed, nails trimmed, and various other places as clean as he can get them.

Turns out, it’s not a date. It’s the start of football season.

They sit on Tim’s ratty couch, drink Clint’s crappy beer, and watch the first game on NBC. Clint remembers his dad being a Green Bay fan, and in the circus Trickshot wouldn’t ever shut up about the fucking Chicago Bears, but he’s never known anyone who supported the Jets. Tim is a Seahawks fan, so Clint watches the game and cheers for Seattle.

Sometimes they knock shoulders; sometimes they look at each other and grin for a few seconds longer than maybe they should - but Tim’s smile is so easy and his eyes are so bright, it’s hard for Clint to make himself look away.

Clint comes over again the following weekend, and every weekend thereafter when he’s not out on a mission. He starts to think that, if he ever got to say that he had a best friend - not just a group of friends, but an honest-to-god _best_ friend - it would be Tim.  

*

Sunday, September 14, 1997

*

When Tim kisses him for the first time, after the Seahawks utterly destroy the Colts 31-3, Clint feels happy.

It doesn’t last.

*

Sunday, October 5, 1997

*

“I wish you’d open up more,” Tim says, so Clint tells him about Dustin, and about Oliver, and even a little bit about Jackie. He doesn’t tell him about Bailey. He knows Tim can tell that he’s holding something back; he knows it bothers him. But he can’t open that door again, not if he wants to function.

*

Sunday, November 9, 1997

*

“I wish you’d just talk to me,” Tim says, so Clint asks him things. He finds out Tim is the second of three children and the only boy. Tim cheers for the Seahawks, even though he grew up in Oakland, because his dad is from Seattle and it’s a family tradition. Tim’s dream job would be Director of Engineering for SHIELD, but would be happy to settle for Chief Engineer on one of the carriers.

Clint tries to tell Tim where he’s from and what he wants. Most of the former gets lodged in his throat, and the latter… well, he doesn’t really know what he wants.

*

Sunday, November 16, 1997

*

“I wish you wouldn’t always just _agree_ with me,” Tim says, and Clint doesn’t know why that one makes him want to duck his shoulders, curl up and hide, beg to let it all be okay - like he’s talking to his dad, or Trickshot. He used to bicker with Jackie all the time. He doesn’t know what’s different now - what makes him so scared to disagree, to make a fuss. Maybe he was a foolish, naive teenager who knows better now. Maybe something inside him has changed since then.

Maybe his dad and Trick and Barney left a scar that Jackie -  and maybe even Bailey, and Tim, now, too - just couldn’t heal.

Clint tries to be what Tim wants him to be. He tries to be perfect, and every day he feels more and more like he’s an over-wound clock, like he’s walking on eggshells, like everything’s about to break down, like…. like he’s waiting for things to end.

*

Sunday, November 30, 1997

*

“I wish you’d give me some credit,” Tim says from the other end of the couch in Clint’s living room, his arms crossed. They just finished watching the Seahawks lose to the Falcons. “I wish you could just trust that I love you and not doubt me all the time.”

*

Sunday, December 14, 1997

*

Clint tries, but it - he - isn’t enough.

“I’m sorry,” Clint says, standing in the doorway of his apartment. It’s the 14th of December, and Seattle just defeated the Raiders by one point. Clint isn’t talking about the game.

“Me, too,” Tim says, as he empties his drawer in Clint’s dresser. “But in the end, I gotta do what’s best for me. And this isn’t it.”

*

Monday, December 22, 1997

*

Clint has a TV now, and a cable package, and for the past week or so he’s been sampling it extensively. When his phone starts to buzz and flash on a Monday night, he considers ignoring it in favor of the Roseanne rerun that’s on. When the caller ID shows that it’s Donna - not Meredith, or worse, Rosita - he gives in and answers.

“News travels fast,” he greets her with.

“What?” Donna asks, obviously confused. “What news?”

Huh. She doesn’t know, yet. The SHIELD rumor mill must be slowing down for the holidays. “I got cable,” he says instead.

“Great, I will ask you all about that later, but right now I need a favor,” Donna says quickly.

“A favor?”

“Yes, a favor, a nice thing you do for other people who are your friends,” she replies.

“And you came to me?” he asks. Sometimes he forgets about the trust his friends have in him.

“Yes. You’re the only one who can do it. It’s stupid and I shouldn’t ask, but if you could, if you have the time, that would be--”

He’s not sure he’s ever heard her this out-of-sorts. “Of course I’ll do it. What’s the favor?”

Donna hesitates, then takes a deep breath and says in a rush, “I need you to be my date to my sister’s wedding next week.”

He blinks. “What?”

“I know it’s short notice and that you have a mission immediately after, but it’s on the thirty-first, it’s a small affair, I’m not even a bridesmaid, I just need someone to be there with me who’s…. on my side.”

Clint frowns. He knows about Donna’s family: her divorced parents, her younger sister. He hadn’t realized her relationship with them had deteriorated to a point where she felt like she needed an ally just to get through a family event. He sits up a bit from where he was slouched on the couch and says, “I, uh… I’ve never been to a wedding before. But yeah. Yeah, Donna, of course I’ll go.”

“And your boyfriend won’t mind?”

Clint snorts at that.

“Ah,” Donna replies. “So what you’re saying is, we’ll both be drinking heavily.”

*

Wednesday, December 31, 1997

*

“Do people normally get married on New Year’s Eve?” Clint asks. They’re sitting at a small table near the back of the hall Donna’s parents have rented for the wedding. About fifty other guests and members of the bridal party are milling around, some talking, some dancing to the music the terrible DJ has on. Donna is peering across the room, where her mother is standing, talking with April and her new husband.

When they arrived at the chapel this evening, Donna’s mother had looked at her, looked at Clint, huffed, and walked away. She hasn’t looked at either of them since.

“No,” Donna replies, turning back to face him so that it’s easier for him to pick out what she’s saying. “Most people get married in the spring or the fall. New Year’s is unusual.”

“So why did they pick it?”

Donna shrugs. “It’s glitzy. Glamorous. New Year’s, champagne, fancy suits and sequined dresses.”

“I have nothing against sequined dresses in theory,” Clint says. “But you hate sequined dresses.”

“Not my wedding,” Donna replies lightly. She’s in a shimmering black sheath with a neckline that’s cut just high enough to cover the scar from the bullet she took in Bosnia last year. “Besides, Meredith got a kick out of shopping for this with me, so it’s not all bad.”

Clint shakes his head and picks at the few bites of dinner left on his plate. The stuffed mushrooms were… interesting. “I know I’m supposed to be helpful and supportive right now, but please tell me - we don’t have to actually stay until midnight, do we?”

Donna sighs, then shakes her head. “We don’t have to stay till midnight, no. But I do want to stay long enough that no one can say I cut out early.” Her fingers are tight around the stem of her wine glass, the only outward sign of how tense she is. The rest of her is an image of serenity - smiling pleasantly, leaning back comfortably in her chair as she watches friends and family pass by, giving her a wide berth.

Clint reaches over and takes the glass out of her hand before she breaks it. It would be a fun story to tell the others about later, but probably not the best thing that could happen right now, among people who already seem to dislike them.

“Okay,” he says, setting the glass aside and reaching back over to lace his fingers in hers. She grips back tightly. “We need to pass the time somehow, so how about a dance?”

Her smile eases into something a little more genuine. “I thought you hated dancing,” she responds. “You complained about that class every week.”

“Maybe a little,” he says, “but you loved it, so shut up and dance with me, yeah?”

She laughs, and this time it sounds right. They make their way onto the dance floor, and he pulls her into his arms. He’s not used to her wearing such high heels, and he fumbles for a moment. “Sorry,” Donna says, completely unrepentant. “They’re Meredith’s fuck-me-stilettos.”

He feels himself blush. “Meredith has-- Yeah, no, that’s a thing Meredith would have. You know what? Never mind.”

Donna shakes with laughter, and he pulls her close and sways to the music. It’s Donna, and being around her is comfortable no matter the situation, so after a few minutes he closes his eyes and loses himself in the music.

*

At ten-thirty, Donna comes back from the ladies room a little pale, a little shaky. “I knew I should have gone in there with you,” Clint says once he gets a good look at her.

“That would have gotten us kicked out of the party even faster,” Donna replies. Clint leads her back to their table in the corner - long abandoned by the random cousins and neighbors who had the misfortune to be seated with them.

Clint glances around, and notices Donna’s mother standing by the dance floor, a self-satisfied little smile on her face. He wonders what he could say to her to make her lose that smirk. “I wouldn’t mind getting kicked out of this party.”

“Please don’t get us kicked out of this party, Clint.”

“Fine,” he says grumpily. “What happened in there?”

Donna sighs, and lifts her left foot to rub at her heel inside the fuck-me-stilettos. Her chic hair knot is starting to let a few wisps fall down to frame her face, and her lipstick has long-since faded. She looks tired. “I’ll tell you about it later. Let’s just… dance for a few more minutes, and then we’ll go up to the room and escape, yeah?”

“Sure,” Clint says, reminding himself to be helpful and not completely useless. “Whatever you need.”

They dance, and with every passing minute, Clint feels himself get more and more tense. Donna brought him here to be an ally. She came here expecting some kind of attack. With the exception of whatever went on in the bathroom, nothing else has happened yet. He can feel it hanging over their heads.

At ten-forty-five, Donna finally nods at him, and they head back to their seats and grab their coats. “Relax,” she says when they’re halfway to the door. “Nothing’s going to happen. That’s why you’re here.”

“I’m here because nothing will happen?”

“Nothing will happen because you’re here,” she explains as they step into the hallway. “They don’t know you. You’re an unknown element, and until they know how you’re going to react, they aren’t going to do anything. If I was here alone, that would be a different story.”

“Would you have come alone, if I couldn’t go with you?”

Donna nods, jaw tight, as they step into the hotel elevator and hit the number for their floor. “It would have… been bad.”

“Then why go at all?” he asks. His understanding of family obligations - don’t tell the teacher how you really got that bruise, don’t tell your foster-father where your brother is hiding, don’t tell Trick where the new shoes came from - doesn’t really cover social events. “They obviously didn’t want you there.”

“Thanks for pointing that out, Clint.”

“Sorry.”

She waves it off and says, “They had to invite me. They didn’t think I’d come. So there’s a little bit of petty pleasure in showing up anyway, and they can’t do anything about it. But the rest is just…”

The elevator doors open and they step out onto the 12th floor. “The rest is what?” Clint asks after a moment.

Donna keys open their door, and holds it open for him to go in first. He makes a quick scan of the room - it’s empty, everything is exactly the way they left it, and none of Clint’s hidden alarms have been tripped - and then turns to wave Donna in.

She sits on the corner of the bed and pulls off Meredith’s shoes, letting them drop to the floor. Finally, she says, “Someday, April will step just a toe out of line, and what happened to me will happen to her. I figure, if I come to her wedding, maybe she’ll know that she can come to me when she needs me.”

“Oh,” Clint says, thinking suddenly of Barney. He wonders where he is. “That’s… really nice.”

“Yeah,” Donna says. She leans backward and flops onto the mattress, arms stretched out toward the headboard. “I try.”

Clink kicks off his new dress shoes and flops down next to her, mirroring her position. He thinks about Donna’s family, about how abuse doesn’t always leave bruises. After a moment, he takes her hand and squeezes.

“I didn’t come out of a normal home,” he says, drawing the words out slowly, wanting to get them right. “I don’t think you have a normal family, either. Normal people don’t become SHIELD agents. They get normal jobs. Or they join one of the normal agencies.”

Donna’s voice is thick when she asks, “Are you saying, what, we’re the leftovers?”

“No! No,” he says, rolling onto his side to look at her. She glances over at him, confused, and he continues, “I’m just saying… us at SHIELD, we call come from the same place. No matter where we all come from, none of us are normal. But we’re together. So that helps, right?”

Donna smiles, eyes damp. “And that is why I brought you with me.”

He flushes and looks away. “Wanna raid the mini-bar and rent “Paper Dragons” on demand?”

“Definitely,” he hears her say.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hoo nelly, it's warnings city this week, folks! 
> 
> This chapter deals with the manipulation and brainwashing of an underage assassin, and the emotional/psychological fallout when that programming breaks down. Warnings for: 
> 
> Canon-typical violence  
> Off-screen dub/non-con sexual contact between aforementioned brainwashed assassin and adult male  
> Discussions of pregnancy and infertility  
> Symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder  
> Acute PTSD episode involving flashbacks, dissociation, and violence toward others  
> Unaddressed symptoms of depression
> 
> Please let me know if I missed any! Stay safe, and feel free to [shoot me a message on tumblr](http://jhscdood.tumblr.com) for questions or for more clarification.

 

[ ](https://41.media.tumblr.com/1946e6ea1685ba9c96a1de01573a21e7/tumblr_o16qeuS92t1rzow5lo1_500.jpg)

Thursday, January 15, 1998

*

Clint wakes up with a jerk. He raises his hand to rub his eyes, and stops short of his intended goal due to the large padded cuffs currently attaching each wrist to the bed. They aren’t uncomfortable; they fit snug against his skin without pinching, and the padding is some sort of foam that wouldn’t rub or chafe or mess up the ace bandage on his left wrist. Still, the reminder that he isn’t exactly free even to roll over in his sleep – that stings. But, that’s what he gets, he supposes. He sits up and winces. Right. Collarbone.

Whoever flashed the overhead lights to wake him up takes that moment to enter. Two new guards appear, fresh replacements of the ones who’d politely, respectfully dragged him around all day yesterday and the day before. The first one steps up to the bed and pulls a case out of his pocket, while the second frees Clint’s right had from the restraints. The case opens – ah, his old over-the-ear aids that he’d replaced a couple years ago. His ITE’s have been missing since the day before yesterday, and didn’t that make yesterday’s events _fun_.

“Agent Barton,” the first one says, once Clint finishes putting the aids in one-handed. “Your presence is required.”

“Do I get breakfast, first?”

“Food will be provided.”

“Pancakes?”

The guard levels him with a polite, completely non-hostile stare, and continues watching as the second guard detaches him from the bed frame. Normally he’d make a sexy-handcuffs joke, but he used all of them up last night while they were strapping him in and it was never a good idea to repeat a joke after a measly eight hours, or so Meredith says.

The guards bring him out to the hallway, where a contingent of what looks like at least ten more agents stand waiting. He wiggles his fingers in a poor imitation of a wave. “Hey, guys.”

No one spares him a glance. Which is a pretty good skill to have, considering they’re all there to make sure he doesn’t attempt a daring and dramatic escape on the way to breakfast.

He’d at least wait till after breakfast. No use escaping on an empty stomach when you can help it.

A few minutes of polite, respectful, and slow (in deference to his wrenched knee) frog-marching later, and Clint is once again attached to an immovable, yet surprisingly comfortable, chair facing a large opaque glass wall. A pink smoothie is placed in his hand, the straw just long enough for him to reach it with his mouth. Nice.

“Thank you for joining us, Agent Barton,” says a voice from beyond the fogged glass, where two or ten or fifty high-level agents and deputies probably sit waiting to watch him sweat.

“Thanks for breakfast,” he replies, and takes a sip from the straw. Peach and mango. SHIELD really doesn’t skimp on the hospitality, even when you’re in more trouble you’ve ever been in your life.

“Let’s begin,” says the voice.

They start by playing the recording of the entire op, beginning from the moment that everyone arrived at the scene and set up their positions around the perimeter of the building where their target was due to arrive. They fast-forward through the three hours Clint spent on a rooftop, silently peering through a scope, waiting for that special someone to arrive.

He knows the exact moment the recording starts up again: When he caught his first look at the target and had to take a second glance just to be sure. He hears himself ask over the comm line, “How old is she supposed to be?”

“What?” Fury had asked in response. They were finally working on a mission together, and so far, things had been going perfectly. “Why?”

“Intel we have has her pegged at 25 at the very youngest, right?” He’d asked, following her path down the block with his eyes. She hadn’t been in range yet, and he’d had time to ask questions.

“What’s your point, Barton?”

“I’ve got her in my sights, and if she’s over the age of sixteen, I’ll eat my hat.”

Fury sighed. “You do realize that her specialty is in making herself look small and weak and using that to her advantage?

“I’m not saying she’s weak, or that she’s not dangerous,” he’d responded, watching her enter the Hyatt across the street from his position. By the grace of God, they even have the room number of where she’s staying. “I’m telling you, she’s a kid. Who the hell put a hit out on a kid?”

“Alright. Barton, stand down,” Fury had ordered. “We’ll discuss this when we get back. Agent Barbour, you in position to take over?”

“The hell?” Clint had asked, over Barbour’s sound of agreement. “You don’t trust me?”

“You can’t fulfill the mission, we’ll send in someone who can.”

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” he hears himself say. Then there’s the sound of running, of the line he’d shot across the street and slid down, the window he’d smashed through, the tuck and roll as he landed practically at the feet of his target - his target, standing frozen in the middle of the room, wide-eyed, before she’d attacked.

He’d fought back, on the defensive, trying not to cause damage, trying to talk sense into her even as he bobbed and weaved from the knives in her hands. “Look, I don’t want to hurt you. There’s a hit out on you, they’re on their way, I’ve got to get you out of here, I’m not gonna—”

He hears himself grunting as he’s thrown into high-end hotel room furniture and walls. There’s the mirror shattering. There’s the bathroom door cracking. Ah, there’s his clavicle.

The sound of fighting suddenly stops with a solid thump, them hitting the floor, his body weight finally giving him an advantage in this fight – “Okay, just, hold _still_ for a minute and let me _talk_ to you!” – the comm picks up the tiniest of whimpers, and fast, shallow breathing, like a rabbit in a snare, he can remember feeling heartbeats going just as quickly – “Just, just calm down, okay? I’m not going to hurt you. I’m going to help you escape, I’m not going to hurt you but you have to trust—”

Another crash, louder this time. The door blowing inward, the flashbang, and the thunder of the backup team’s boots as they storm the room. He hears himself curse, remembers covering her with his body and hoping that it will be enough to stop the bullets before they reach her, because he knows now it’s a lost cause, even as he’s yelling, “Don’t! Look at her, she’s just a kid, just look at her!”

And then this must be when they knocked him out, because he doesn’t remember Fury shout, “Tranqs, tranqs! If anyone is going to put a bullet in that bastard, it’s going to be me.” But he hears it now.

The recording ends, and Clint comes back to the present. He’s restrained, he’s in deep, deep trouble, he has no idea if the cause of all this trouble is even still alive because they haven’t told him a damn thing since he woke up with a helluva headache and an IV in his arm, but he _knows_ that he was right.

The voice comes back. “Agent Barton. At what point did you decide to attempt to subdue the mark instead of proceeding with the operation?”

“You mean why didn’t I kill her like I was supposed to?”

“Correct.”

“Look, the intel said she’s been operating for ages, but any hits we can definitely pin on her  have only been in the last couple of years. The reason we decided to pursue her is because there have been _so many_ hits, and because she’s terrifyingly effective, and because she’s KGB and some politician decided now was a good time to go after them through her. We had a lot of information on where she might be, who she might go after, we had this whole big plan—"

“—a plan that you decided to screw with,” someone interjects. It sounds like Fury. So he’s here, too, then. It hits him like a punch to the gut, but his resolve, for once, just once, stays strong.

“Yeah, I screwed up the plan, ‘cause it was based – it hinged on the fact that she was a grown adult able to make decisions for herself. But that’s where the intelligence failed, because we didn’t have any good photos of her, any close-ups, and anyone that had gotten an up-close look at her were dead. And when I got my up-close look at her, I realized we got it all wrong. I’ve killed a lot of people for SHIELD, but I’m not killing a fucking kid, Black Widow or not.”

He sits back in his seat, and because he occasionally tries to be a polite Iowa boy, adds, “Sorry.”

*

Friday, January 16, 1998

*

He’s called into a different briefing room the next day – a normal one with normal chairs. It’s less formal this time, just him, Fury, his guards, and his padded restraints. Clint is politely directed to a seat at the table, and Fury slides a folder across to him.

He hesitates taking it, and glances up at Fury. In a flash, he remembers the recording from yesterday, his demand for tranqs and not bullets. Given the strike team’s trigger fingers, that order is probably the only reason he’s still alive.

He’d been so angry, before, at the lack of trust shown him. Now he doesn’t know how he feels.

Finally, he flips the folder open to find X-ray images of elbows and wrists, knees and ankles. At the very bottom of the pile, between the last film and the folder, is a crisp ten dollar bill.

“What…?” he asks, picking it up. He looks over at Fury, confused.

Fury leans back in his seat, regarding him gently. “We’ve still got her in testing. God knows what kind of surprises are waiting for us in that girl’s brain. But the important thing, the thing that’s most relevant to your situation, Barton, is what we found out from those X-rays.”

“What did you find out?”

“Well it turns out, while kids are growing up, their bones grow out from cartilage at each end, slowly getting longer, and the part that grows is called the epiphyseal plate. Now, when a kid reaches adulthood, stops growing, that cartilage hardens into bone like everything else in their skeleton. What that means is, if you know what you’re doing, you can examine someone’s epiphyseal plate and get a pretty good idea of how old they are.”

Clint looks down at the tenner on the table. He slumps. Part of him is so, so relieved to be right; a bigger part of him, it turned out, feels sick at the thought. “And?”

“Our best estimates have her at fourteen, fifteen, at the oldest.”

“ _Shit,_ ” Clint breathes, eyes wide. “Shit. She could– she– _fifteen?_ ”

“My thoughts exactly. So now we have the moral dilemma of having, in our custody, an extremely dangerous, highly-trained assassin with a kill list into the double digits, who also happens to be a middle-schooler.” He rubs his hand down his face and leans back in his chair. “The good news is, you’re at least halfway off the hook for conspiring with an enemy agent to bring down SHIELD from the inside.”

Clint hears the apology in that statement, and starts to feel a bit better. He asks, “What’s the bad news?”

Fury ticks the options off on his fingers. “She could be a plant. She could be a sleeper agent. She’s young, and the bad guys play a long game, so maybe we deprogram her and give her a shit-ton of therapy and eventually hire her as an agent trusted with our secrets, and fifteen or so years from now she goes live and blows up the Hub with all of us inside.”

“Okay...” Clint draws out the word bemusement. “That’s... okay, yeah, I can kind of see that, actually.”

“I thought you might.”

“So what’s it going to take to deprogram her?” Clint asks.

“That’s for me to know. For now, Barton, you’re still under house arrest.”

He slumps back down. “Aww.”

Fury rolls his eye. “You’re still under house arrest, but now if they shoot you, your guards will feel a little guilty afterwards.”

“Thanks, boss. Knew you had a soft spot for me.”

*

He’s brought back to the same room, but this time the restraints are removed entirely, though he’s still locked in with a guards outside the door. Meals are brought to him, and he’s still not allowed utensils, but he doesn’t really need them to eat a burger and fries so he isn’t bothered. If they bring him spaghetti and red sauce with no fork, that might be more of an issue, but for right now… Well, it’s kind of like a vacation, right? He doesn’t have assignments or looming deadlines that he’s responsible for meeting. He’s not fitting in much physical activity, but considering how hard Black Widow kicked his ass a couple of days ago, he’s frankly grateful for the rest.

Very relaxing.

Could use a phone in here.

*

Tuesday, January 27, 1998

*

“She wants to see you,” Fury says immediately, when Clint’s brought back into their little conference room.

Clint sits down heavily in his chair. “What? But I’m the one who got her into this mess!”

Fury shrugs. “She’s getting some of her senses back. Slowly. It’s a process. But she’s with it enough to know what you did and what you meant.”

“How do you know this isn’t part of some super-secret SHIELD takeover plan?” He asks. He’s spent a lot of hours thinking of all the ways this could still go wrong. “Do you really trust us to be in the same room together?”

Fury has another file in his hand, like the one filled with X-rays of Black Widow’s teenage bones. He lays it on the table and Clint groans. “Oh god, what’s it going to be this time?”

Fury opens the folder rather than passing the entire thing across the table like last time. He pulls out another film, but instead of a black and white sheet of recognizable features, this one is a riot of colors. He stares at for a second, until the image coalesces into—

“Brain scans. Functional MRI.” He holds up the film. “This one is from the day after we brought her in.”

“This one is three days later.” The colors have shifted from a mass of solid red to blotches interspersed with yellows and oranges and a vibrant magenta.

“And this is a week later.” Now the scan is mostly orange, with limited patches of red remaining and a few tendrils of green sneaking in.

Clint squints at the films. “So this means… what, that she’s freaking out less?”

Fury lifts one shoulder in a shrug. “She’s freaking out less, the programming is breaking down, something like that.”

“Wait, programming? Like—“

“Looks like, however Black Widow ended up with the KGB, that’s not where she started out. This is programming – actual, honest-to-god, three steps past brainwashing programming.”

Clint stares at him, unable to process the words for a moment. Then he latches onto what Fury said a moment ago, and focuses on:“But it’s breaking down?”

“It looks like – and what little we’ve gotten out of her—“

“Gotten out of her?” he growls. He knows he’s being too suspicious. He knows he needs to trust Fury. But Fury didn’t trust him first, and that still smarts.

Fury levels him a glare. “I’m not in the habit of torturing kids, Barton, Geneva Convention notwithstanding. We’re staying strictly above the line on this one.”

“Oh. Okay. Good.” He pauses. “Sorry.”

“As I was saying, from the evidence we’ve gotten from the doctors and what she’s said, it seems like this type of programming needed to be reapplied every few days or weeks in order to stay fresh. Little boosters, usually, unless she had a mission, in which case they turbo-charged it. We’re lucky that we caught her at the end of her mission, when she’d been loose for a while and more open to your… overtures.”

“You call that open? She kicked my ass!”

“Yeah she kicked your ass.” Fury grins, like he thinks that’s hilarious. It probably is to him. “But she didn’t kill you. Apparently, when you said you weren’t going to hurt her… I guess somewhere down there she trusted you.”

“My collarbone and I have a hard time believing that.”

“Okay then.” Fury reaches into the folder again. “Let’s see what the science says. Here’s her brain at the beginning of her last session.” The film is much like the last one he saw – still hot, but not burning red.

“Here’s her brain when we show her a photo of the man she killed an hour before she met you.”

This image looks far more like the first one – half of it is lit up bright magenta.

“And here it is again when we show her a photo of you.”

It couldn’t be more different. The magenta has subsided to yellow, the red is down to orange, and there’s a large section in the center filled with a cool green. Clint feels his jaw drop. How in the hell…?

“I…”

“We’re still trying to figure out what a lot of this means, of course. But the preliminary data suggests that, to put it plainly, you’re a good influence on her. So now we’re bringing you in.”

*

Wednesday, January 28, 1998

*

Their first meeting – well, the first one where they’re not actively trying to kill each other – does not go all that well. At least some of that is definitely not his fault. They’ve got her set up in a room that’s nice enough, except for the invisible Wall running down the middle of it that glows and knocks him back when he accidentally walks into it. There’s a metal bed bolted to the floor on the left; on the right, a metal table (also bolted down) and a commode behind a screen. They’ve tried to cheer it up with a bright pillowcase and bedspread, but it’s a prison cell, and everyone knows it.

The girl is sitting calmly, expressionless, without a hair out of place. Her relaxed posture is belied by the fact that she’s sitting on the floor in the far back left, behind the bed, her back to the corner, with clear sight lines past the Wall to the rest of the room, where three agents keep watch around the perimeter.

Clint seats himself on the floor in front of the Wall, bypassing the nearby chair in favor of being on the girl’s level. She catches his eye, and her calm demeanor fades into a very, very teenager-like scowl.

He smiles and gives her a wave. The scowl deepens.

After fifteen minutes, he’s pulled from the room again, and sent back to his own definitely-not-a-cell.

*

The doctors and psychiatrists seem to think the first encounter went well, so after that, he’s allowed a fifteen-minute visit with her once a day. At first, he tries to talk, but that tactic pretty much peters out after the second day of glaring. She glares less when he’s quiet, so he finds other ways to entertain himself.

One day, he borrows a quarter from the guard who brought him from his room and does coin tricks the whole time, smiling to himself when he sees the girl watching him from the corner of her eye.

Another day, after his wrist brace has finally come off, he snags an apple on the way out of the mess and spends a few minutes remembering all his favorite contact juggling moves, making the apple appear to dance around his fingers and defy gravity in all sorts of interesting ways.

About a week into it, he sits down in his usual spot and pulls five sheets of notebook paper out of his pocket, which he proceeds to crumple into tiny balls and then juggle.

It’s harder than it looks. The paper balls are far lighter than what he used in the circus, and it takes him a few minutes to find the right rhythm with just three. He adds the fourth without a problem, but the moment he tosses in the fifth, he misses his catch by just half a beat, and then the other four balls rain down on his head as he instinctively ducks.

The girl snorts.

Clint looks up, and there’s a glint in her eye and a faint smirk on her lips. As soon as she catches his glance, the expression is wiped from her face as she scowls and looks away again.  

Clint grins, and when Fury calls that night from god-knows-where for his daily update, Clint recounts the harrowing tale in full. Fury increases the length of their visits to thirty minutes.

*

Sunday, February 8, 1998

*

“Why are you still here?” the girl asks out of the blue.

“They upped my visits to thirty minutes instead of fifteen,” Clint responds, casual as can be in response to her first voluntary words.

“But why are you still here?”

He cants his head, unsure of where this is going. “You mean, why am I still on base here with you?”

“Why are you still alive?” she asks, her calm voice gaining an edge.

Clint snorts, and refrains from rubbing his still-healing collarbone. “Come on, you didn’t kick my ass _that_ hard.”

“You ignored a kill order. Conspired with an enemy operative. Brought her back to your secret base.”

The penny dropped. “You’re asking why my superiors didn’t execute me for treason, or something.”

She nods, and he shrugs. “I explained what I did and why I did it. They agreed it was the right call.”

“And what if they change their minds?”

“They won’t.”

She glares. “They will if I give them a reason to.”

Clint knows it’s not a threat, not the one it sounds like. “Well, then, it’s all on you. I’m not going to lose my promotion if you have a bad day.”

She frowns at him, as if frustrated by his inability to understand that, “I’m not talking about a bad day.”

He takes a breath and lets it out slowly. Thinks about the doctors and psychologists who have been working for hours each and every day to deprogram her. “I know.”

The conversation is obviously over, and a few minutes later, he has to leave.

The next day he arrives at her room to learn their visits have been increased to an hour. He wonders if this is a reward, and which of them earned it.

*

Friday, February 13, 1998

*

“Are you ever gonna let her out of there?” Clint asks Fury during their video conference. Fury’s at one of their other bases, several time zones away if the cup of coffee in his hand is any indication. Clint knows he could easily figure out where Fury is if he put his mind to it. He decides not to. He’s been thinking a lot about trust, lately.

Fury replies evenly, “We let her out to take her to the medical suite every day.”

“Yeah, cuffed, and with twelve armed guards? That’s got to be no fun for her.”

“She’s unpredictable. We keep eyes on her the whole time she’s out, and we still have to relieve her of three scalpels and a tongue depressor every time we bring her back to her room.”

“Cell.”

“ _Room_ , Barton. We’re not punishing her by keeping her in there, but we are being realistic on account of how she’s an assassin.”

“She’s a kid. She’s a teenager. She’s probably scared out of her wits when she’s not being pissed as hell at us, and this isn’t what she needs, being dragged around a military base in irons.”

“And what, in your expert opinion, does she need?”

Clint thinks back to himself at that age, to Jackie, and to the younger circus kids he’d been tasked with looking after in the mornings and evenings. What they’d wanted most was, “Choice. Even if the only choice she has is what she gets to eat for breakfast, or what color shirt she gets to wear that day. You’ve got her powerless down here, so give her some power back, even if it’s just over some bullshit like that.”

Fury nods. “I’ve got half my psych staff saying the same thing. The other half want to dissect her brain and publish their findings in _Psychiatry Today_.”

“SHIELD shrinks are weird, sir.”

“You’re telling me. I’ll see what kind of choices we can give her while she’s here.”

*

The next day, when he walks into the totally-not-a-cell-block, the girl is wearing a hot pink t-shirt instead of a scrub top. A stack of other clothing items sits atop the metal table across from her bed. She’s seated in the exact center of the far wall, her back up against the concrete.

“The doctors have already asked me why I picked the pink one,” she says upon his arrival.

“What’d you tell them?” he asks, curious.

“That the pink reminds me of the blood of my enemies,” she replies seriously.

“They bought that?”

She lifts a shoulder. “Hard to say.”

Clint laughs. “Kid, you are—“

“Natasha,” the girl says.

Clint doesn’t let his jaw drop. He’d been avoiding calling her Black Widow, and definitely avoiding any cute nickname – anything Jackie would have kicked his ass for using. He figured “kid” and “kiddo” were safe enough. He never thought—

She looks at him. God, she’s young. “My name is Natasha.”

*

Thursday, February 19, 1998

*

On Thursday, as he’s attempting another juggling trick with six paper balls, he miscalculates a throw, and once again the balls hit the floor in a mess, and scatter. Because he’s terrible at juggling, his happens at least twice a week, much to Natasha’s visible amusement. Maybe he’s a little more terrible than he would usually be, but no one could blame him for wanting to hear that delicate snort of disdain once in awhile.

This time is no different, and when she smirks a little at him, he grabs one of the paper balls and lobs it at her head. He fully expects it to bounce harmlessly off the Wall. Instead, it sails right through.

The girl catches it right in front of her nose, and slowly lowers her hand as she stares at him. He stares back. Then she’s leaping to her feet, sailing over his head and sprinting up the steps to the exit door. It stays locked despite her pulling, and stays that way even as she dials in passcode after passcode on the digital lock. Then she spins, putting her back to the closed door and facing the room.

Their two guards stare placidly at her from either wall. Clint hasn’t moved from his spot on the floor other than to turn to watch her. She glances between the three of them for several seconds before her shoulders slump and she asks, “Is this a test?”

*

Later, Fury calls and opens with, “I hear she finally got past the Wall.”

“She could have killed me in seconds,” Clint replies.

“You’re the one who asked us to give her more space.”

“That was a week ago, and you’re just now…” He trails off and thinks for a moment. “How long has the Wall been down?”

“Three days,” Fury replies, with that self-satisfied tone.

Clint leans forward to knock his head against the table top. “How are the shrinks handling this sudden turn of events?”

“Well. Half of them think it’s a good sign she went for the door instead of your neck.”

“And the other half?” he asks the table.

“Still want to stick electrodes on her brain and poke her with a stick to see what happens.”

Clint feels his mouth twist into an unwilling smile. He looks up and asks, “Which half decided to take the Wall down?”

Fury grins. “Guess.”

*

Friday, March 13, 1998

*

Clint walks into the room and stops. Usually, when he arrives for their visits, it’s to Natasha sitting somewhere along the back wall, closer or further from the corner depending on how vulnerable she was feeling that day. He’s never, not once, seen her in, on, or near the bed when anyone else is around. He wasn’t sure if she even slept in it.

Today, though. She’s curled up on her side on the bed, wrapped up in her comforter. From here, he can just see the top of her head – and the mess that is her, usually so well-kept, hair.

He slowly leaves the doorway and walks further into the room. He spares a quick glance at the two guards, but their blank faces give him no sign as to what’s going on. He steps up to the bed and looks down. Given her body language, he’s surprised to find that her eyes are dry. They’re staring at the empty space in front of her, and she doesn’t seem to have noticed his approach.

“Hey, kiddo,” he says softly. “Mind if I sit?”

One shoulder lifts in a shrug, as it so often does. He takes it as permission to walk around the end of the bed and perch by her feet, turned so he can look at her face. He doesn’t ask if she’s okay; he knows how hard it is for him to admit it when he’s not. Instead, he waits.

It’s been longer than an hour when she says, “They ask me questions, now. Before, they didn’t. When they were deprogramming me. They knew better than to risk my recovery with questions. It would’ve set me back, trying to remember.”

She pauses a long while.

“Now,” she says, “they ask. They want to know things. What I think. What I dream. Where I have been. What I have done. They want intel.”

“They want to help,” Clint says, after a moment. She shoots a brief glance at him before looking away. “A big part of working through trauma is talking about it.”

“I do not remember much, from before. Before you. More comes back, every day. I remember. The red room. The missions. Yelena. I tell them what I can. But last night, I have dream. And this morning, they ask.”

“What did they ask?”

“My last mission. I pretend as prostitute. Is obvious ploy for assassin, but man is stupid, thinks I am too young to kill him. He takes me to his room. I kill him. I kill guard. I leave. I do not care. I leave, and then you find me, and I do not care.

“But now… I remember. The way it felt, seeping out of me while I walked, how cold it was on my legs. Now I dream. Him holding me down. Others holding me down. It’s cold and wet and I remember.”

She shudders and pulls the blanket tighter around her shoulders.

“Natasha,” Clint says. He reaches out, places a comforting hand on her shoulder.

The tremors suddenly stop. “Are you going to fuck me?”

“What? Jesus, no!” He pulls his hand back. “No one’s going to touch you. You’re safe here.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Natasha—“

“I want you to go away now.”

She’s never kicked him out of the room before, never asked him for anything before. He stands and takes two quick steps away from the bed. Takes another. “I’m going. But I’ll be right outside the door if you want me to come back.”

She doesn’t say anything, and he crosses into the other half of the room. “Do you want them to put the Wall up?” he asks, wondering if that small measure of security might help her peace of mind. Anyone could still get to her, logically, if they have access to the controls. But the illusion is what’s important, sometimes.

“Yes,” she says in a small voice.

He leaves.

*

That night, Fury listens in silence as Clint recounts his visit. Then he leans forward, bracing his elbows on the table in front of the camera feed. “This isn’t a surprise, really. They found sexual fluids during their initial medical exam, and we matched the DNA to her most recent hit. Only thing we didn’t know was how she felt about the whole thing.”

Clint rubs his face with his hands, exhausted. He’d stayed in the hallway outside Natasha’s room for hours, though she’d never asked for him (he hadn’t expected her to). “So now we know how she feels. Which is: terrified that it’s going to happen again, only this time it’ll be me or a doctor or a guard who’s going to do it. What the hell do we think we’re playing at here, Nick?”

Fury sighs. “Natasha isn’t the only one having a shitty day. Go down to the gym and punch some things ‘till you feel better. We’ll figure out the rest later.”

Clint doesn’t punch things, but he does run on the treadmill until midnight - and he notes, with some relief, that Friday the thirteenth is over. The endorphins give him a boost as usual, but he’s still chewing on the Natasha question. He passes by the caf on the way back to his room to grab a banana and a granola bar. He’s halfway through the bar and almost to his room when a door ahead of him opens, and Ominous Silent Guard Number One steps out, providing Ominous Silent Guard Number Two with a lengthy and involved kiss goodbye.

Clint flushes – it’s a good-looking kiss from any angle – and hurries by. They don’t notice.

*

Clint wakes up the next morning, rushes through putting his hearing aids in, and immediately calls Fury.

“What’s happening?” Fury asks in lieu of a greeting, after barely two rings.

“You said they found sexual fluids on Natasha when they examined her that first day, right?” Clint asks in a rush. If he’s right...

“Yes,” Fury says, suspicion in his tone.

“So there probably wasn’t a condom involved, right?”

“Probably.”

Clint takes a deep breath. “Has Natasha had a menstrual period since she’s been here?”

“Excuse me?”

“I’ve been hanging out with her for two months, and if she’s had a period, she’s kept it really quiet. Maybe she’s just that good at hiding things. But… She had unprotected sex, and she’s old enough…”

“Shit,” Fury swears. Clint hears him typing in the background - pulling up Natasha’s records, like as not. “Goddammit. For all their records about the number of words she says per day and what color her brain scans are, our brilliant crew of psychiatric experts don’t even have a line on their forms to record that shit. For Christ’s sake.”

“She’s gotta have given some clue. Has she asked for pads or tampons? Taken more napkins than usual from the mess? Thrown any bloody underwear in the hamper?”

Fury hums to show he’s listening as he quietly skims the records. “I’m not seeing anything,” he says after a while. “You’re telling me our little middle-school assassin could be knocked up?”

“Stranger things have happened than teenagers getting pregnant.”

“Only you would think of this shit, Barton.” Fury sighs. “I’ll send one of the _actual_ doctors to do a pregnancy test. And an STD panel, just to be safe.”

*

Because Natasha refuses to leave her room, the doctors do a quick blood draw while she sits in her corner, facing the three of them. Three - because there’s a single steel needle involved, and apparently a doctor and two guards are needed to prevent Natasha from going on a killing spree with a two-inch-long needle. What do they expect her to do - stab them all in the neck with it?

Clint thinks it’s ridiculous - but he’s not allowed in the room for the procedure. Apparently, when they tell her what they need the blood for, she goes absolutely still. And when the cadre of professionals leave with their precious vial, they close the door behind them. By request.

*

Tuesday, March 17, 1998

*

Natasha doesn’t let anyone else in to visit for three days. They’ve given control of the wall completely over to her, and she keeps it solid and opaque. One of the psychologists – a woman, one of the good half – brings her meals in and speaks to her a little bit each time. The general consensus is that Natasha could use a little self-imposed isolation for now. Clint still goes down every day for his visit and stares at the dark wall, just in case.

Day four, she lets him in, and the guards tell him he can take her down to the mess for an early dinner. She steps through the halls carefully, as if waiting for something to jump out at her. The dining room has been cleared by the time they arrive, and it’s just the two of them (and their two guards, plus the six others he knows are guarding the side and back doors just in case). They get breakfast for dinner – pancakes that have been dyed green for the holiday, plus regular eggs and bacon – and eat it with plastic cutlery. Natasha stares in horror at Clint’s syrup-drenched tower of pancakes.

Clint grins, because green pancakes, and digs in.

Natasha puts her fork down halfway through the meal and says out of the blue, “I’m sterile.”

Clint slowly lowers his fork. The silence stretches out, until Natasha adds, “That’s why I haven’t menstruated. Not because I’m pregnant.”

“Is it natural - like you got mumps as a kid?”

“No.”

“Oh,” Clint says, at a loss for words. He’s known a lot - _a lot_ \- of women who got pregnant when they didn’t want to. And after joining SHIELD, he met a lot of women who could choose whether they got pregnant or not. He’s never met someone who just… couldn’t. He feels bad for never having thought about it before.

“Do you want to talk about it?” He asks, finally.

She shakes her head slowly. “Doesn’t matter.”

Clint thinks it really, really does. But he just responds, “Okay. Did you tell your therapists?”

“Don’t you think they have enough to work with already?” she asks, all attitude.

“Yeah, but we gotta make sure we’re getting our money’s worth out of them,” Clint says lightly. “Can’t have them running around with all this free time.”

Natasha’s mouth quirks up at the corner, and without answering, she goes back to her meal.

When they get back to her room, the guard stops Natasha and hold out his hand. She shrugs and passes over two steak knives, which had definitely not been in the vicinity of their table nor the pancakes, and steps into her room.

After that, dinner becomes a regular event, followed by visits to a secure, weapon-free TV lounge, where, on a restricted number of channels, they can watch sitcom reruns, movies, and educational programming.

It’s not bad.

*

Monday, April 6, 1998

*

A few weeks later, it’s to the point where Natasha is allowed out to roam the halls of the base, with Clint and a single guard, between the hours of four and eight at night. Sometimes this manifests as actual roaming – Natasha with her hands in her pockets and her head down, striding along like a surly teenager. Today, she chooses to park them on the couch in the lounge near Clint’s room, turning the TV on and channel surfing until she finds _Batman & Robin_ playing on USA.

Clint makes every attempt to pay attention to the movie and the yellow text across the bottom of the screen, but his gaze keeps getting drawn back to Natasha. The shrinks have been hard on her ever since her confession on St. Patrick’s Day. There are dark circles under her eyes, and her face is pale.

But she’s smiling at the movie (well, smirking, the script is terrible so far) and leaning against the armrest of the couch. Her feet are up on the cushion between them, her feet tucked slightly under his thigh. It’s the barest hint of contact, the only contact she’ll allow, but she’s allowing it, so Clint takes that as a win.

He watches her fall asleep in that position while the actors argue onscreen. Another show of trust – or maybe just pure physical exhaustion. Either way, Clint figures she needs it, so he directs his attention back to the movie and doesn’t think more of it.

Until, of course, an explosion taking place onscreen rouses Natasha from sleep, and Clint finds himself flat on his back on the floor, Natasha hissing at him from above, her hand around his throat and something sharp digging into his neck.

He tries to speak, calm her down, “Nat—”

She presses harder as she leans forward and spits out something in Russian he can’t parse.

There’s another presence, then, far back enough to be out of Natasha’s reach. Clint can’t turn his head to look, but it must be their guard, finally coming forward after weeks of standing silently in doorways and corners.

“Natasha,” the guard says. They’ve never actually heard him speak before. Now, his voice is low and soothing. “It’s April sixth. It’s a Monday. You’re in the TV lounge at SHIELD. You’re safe.”

She doesn’t relax her grip, but she doesn’t tighten it, either, and the sharp – stiletto? – doesn’t dig any deeper. Clint concentrates on taking what shallow breaths he can get past the hold on his throat.

“You’re safe,” the guard repeats. “What is your name?”

“Natasha… Romanov.”

“Where are you, Natasha?”

Her eyes dart around the room in a flash. “…At SHIELD.”

“Yes, you’re right, you’re at SHIELD. Who is it you’re fighting?”

Natasha looks down and searches Clint’s face. He can see when she doesn’t make the connection, and feels her hand tighten, choking off the rest of his air supply. “An enemy.”

“Look at his face. Tell me his name.”

His vision is getting blurry, making it hard for him to see the expression on her face. He thinks she looks confused. “His name is… Clint Barton, Agent of SHIELD. Clint Barton.”

“Good. You’re right. That’s Clint Barton. What’s Clint’s favorite food, Natasha?”

“His favorite? It’s…” Her eyes dart back and forth, becoming more clear as she searches through the fog to find the answer. Eventually, she says, “Pancakes. Drenched in butter and fake maple syrup. Because he is uncultured swine.”

“Good, Natasha. Now look at him.”

His vision is getting grey, but her eyes finally seem to clear. “Oh. Oh!”

She’s off his chest and across the room in an instant, out of his line of sight. The guard’s head comes into view above him, and his hands come up to press a white cloth against Clint’s neck, where the object is still lodged. “Don’t move, Agent Barton, just breathe deep,” he orders, all business, then moves one hand to raise his radio. “I need a medical team in room 210C. Agent Barton has received a puncture wound to the neck.”

With his hand still applying pressure, the guard turns his attention back to Natasha. “Natasha. Do you know where you are?”

“The SHIELD base. Room 210C. The TV lounge next to Clint’s room.”

“Good. Do you know what happened just now?” When Clint gasps, trying to draw in more air, he says, “Try to breathe normally, Agent Barton. Just breathe.”

Natasha’s voice sounds young, and lost. “I was having dream. Didn’t… I didn’t mean to hurt him. I thought he was someone else.”

“It’s okay,” the guard says. “ _(Breathe, just breathe normally, you’ll get it)_. You didn’t mean to hurt him. He’s going to be okay.”

She snorts, and sounds more like herself when she says, “He hates that phrase.”

“I know,” he replies, then, “Good, Barton, keep breathing just like that. You’ve got it.”

The medical team arrives at that point, replacing his guard and barking out questions and orders. Clint waits while they pack the wound. He feels like he’s off somewhere else, like he still can’t breathe even with the pressure on his throat gone. He thinks maybe he was hyperventilating, before. Spots are dancing in front of his eyes.

They load him carefully into a gurney; he closes his eyes as it’s lifted back up to normal height. He can’t hear the guard’s voice anymore in the din.

Whatever the guard said, it must have been something, because Natasha is back above him, eyes wide. He turns his hand palm-up in invitation, and is surprised to feel her small hand slip into his. He gives it a squeeze as an oxygen mask is slipped over his nose and mouth, and then he’s being wheeled out of the room and down the hall.

*

She’d stabbed him with an industrial-sized staple she’d pulled from the wooden frame of the couch. She hadn’t dug it in deep enough to hit his artery – he’d be dead right now if she had – but it had been a close one nonetheless. Clint can’t really blame her for what happened, or begrudge her an improvised weapon when in an unfamiliar place surrounded by unfamiliar (potentially hostile) people. He knows that trust isn’t something she’s used to giving.

“She didn’t mean to do it,” he explains to Fury over teleconference the next morning. The bruising on his larynx has made talking just shy of excruciating. “It was PTSD. She didn’t know me.”

He hears Fury sigh. “I guess it’s good that she felt comfortable enough with you to fall asleep in public, no matter how it ended up. Agent Coulson seems to have handled it all right.”

“Yeah,” Clint says, remembering the voice in his ear, gently telling him to _breathe._

*

Natasha comes by that evening during her four free hours. Her shoulders are hunched, and Clint is reminded once again of her impossibly young age. She’s flanked by two agents this time. They let her just inside the privacy curtain in the medical ward, but don’t allow her any closer.

“Sorry,” she says, like it took everything she had to pull out the words and give them voice despite their bitter taste. Clint knows how that feels.

“S’ok, kid,” he rasps out. She winces. “C’mere.”

She glances at the guards. The one from yesterday’s debacle – Agent Coulson – gives a short nod after a moment. She comes to stand next to his bed. Just like yesterday, he turns his hand palm-up, and she takes it in her own. He gives two quick squeezes. “It’s okay,” he repeats.

“I thought you hated that platitude.”

“Special case,” he responds. Talking still hurts, and he’s not allowed to move his head much, but he gives her a smile. She still looks uncertain, guilty, and he doesn’t want her to leave while her face still looks like that. He gestures to the chair and picks up the book someone had fetched from his room that morning and left on the side table. “Sit. Read.”

She complies, taking the book from his hand and opening it to the beginning. “Not for the first time, an argument had broken out over breakfast at number four, Privet Drive.”

*

After the Great Staple Incident, as Clint calls it, Natasha is sent to more therapy, and her time allotted to hanging out with Clint in the evening is extended to five hours a night.

Clint doesn’t understand how an attempt on his life can result in anything other than permanent incarceration, but he doesn’t want to look a gift horse in the mouth by asking someone about it. He figures Natasha had some kind of breakthrough in therapy as a result of accidentally stabbing him in the neck during a dissociative episode.

The important thing, to him, is that Natasha has now twice responded positively to physical comfort. Donna would be so proud.

*

Clint begins to see two Natashas emerge. The first, the one he’s gotten to know over the past few months, is a scared teenager who’s been through hell and barely trusts that she’s gotten out. The second is a cool, reserved, unaffected young woman. It’s a face she puts on any time they’re not alone – when the guard has changed to someone other than Agent Coulson, when they’re eating dinner in the mess along with a handful of other base staff, to acclimate her to being around regular (for SHIELD) people. Clint understands the need to put on a face, to create distance, to not want to broadcast your emotions (vulnerability) to anyone walking by.

*

Saturday, April 18, 1998

*

The next time they end up in the TV lounge, the bruising on Clint’s throat has turned to violent greens and yellows, and the skin around the stitches is no longer swollen and red, but healing nicely. Natasha fails spectacularly at hiding the way she keeps glancing at his neck.

The pain in his voice box is gone, though, so it’s easy for him to point her towards the couch and say, “Sit. _Twister_ is about to come on and I don’t want to miss a minute of Bill Paxton playing a good guy.”

As Natasha approaches the sofa, however, her steps become more hesitant, and she comes to a halt in front of her usual spot. She glances at him, then over to their guard by the doorway, then back to the couch. Then, seeming to make a decision, she nods once and sits down on the middle cushion.

Clint eases himself down next to her. “Okay?”

“Could you please ask Agent Coulson to sit with us?” she responds in a quiet voice.

Clint blinks, and turns. “Hey, uh, Agent Coulson? Wanna watch _Twister_ with us?”

Now it’s Coulson’s turn to blink. It’s a short pause, and then he’s stepping around the other side of the couch to where the empty seat is. “You’re sure?” he asks Natasha softly.

She nods resolutely, and Coulson sits, relaxing back into the cushions. “I haven’t seen this one. Are you sure Bill Paxton isn’t the villain?”

*

Saturday, April 25, 1998

*

The next time, Coulson retrieves a bag of microwave popcorn from his jacket pocket and throws it in the lounge microwave before the movie starts. He places the bag in Natasha’s lap as he sits.

“Movie night tradition,” he says, and takes a handful.

*

Thursday, July 23, 1998

*

Before Clint knows it, it’s been six months since he brought Natasha in to SHIELD, and then he wakes up one random morning and realizes it’s the twenty-third, and Bailey turns ten today.

He rolls over to stare at the ceiling. Bailey is ten. How can it be ten years? What has Clint been doing this whole time? Running around playing at spies and secret agents, pretending like he’s saving the world, like he’s a person worthy of being a parent, like one day he’s going to be able to just show up where Bailey is and suddenly have a home and a life and a… family.

Clint stares at the ceiling and realizes he’s confined to a SHIELD base in the middle of nowhere, where he can’t leave to go find his kid and where he certainly couldn’t bring them back to. Bailey’s stuck somewhere, and Clint can’t do a damn thing about it.

Some parent he turned out to be. He rolls over, shoves his head under a pillow, and wills the world away.

He’s fallen into a light doze when a hand touches his shoulder. He lifts his head out from beneath the pillow and turns to glare. It’s one of his guards, the woman with the brown hair. He hasn’t seen much of her since his guard was reduced to just one, and that one was usually Coulson. She’s frowning at him, and saying something he can’t quite hear. His hearing aids are on the bedside table, and he doesn’t care.

He goes to roll back over so he doesn’t have to look at her, and she pokes him in the ball of his shoulder. “[You] [si--]?” she asks, her eyebrow raised in a question. Oh yeah, well. That would be a concern, wouldn’t it?

He shakes his head. “I’m fine. Go away.”

Maybe she leaves, then. Maybe she keeps standing there. He rolls away to stare at the wall and doesn’t care.

The next person to shake his shoulder is Coulson. Clint groans and asks, “Will you people just leave me alone for one day? Is that really so hard?”

Coulson stares at him for a moment, but thankfully stays silent. Then he leaves, and Clint seriously considers shoving his desk chair under the door handle, before deciding that would involve too much effort. Fuck it.

*

He’s staring at the door, waiting for the next person to come and imply that he’s a bad person and a useless agent, when it opens and, unexpectedly, Natasha walks in. Coulson follows, but rather than stand at the door like a guard, he comes to stand next to Natasha by the bed. Like a friend.

Natasha picks up his hearing aid case from the nightstand and hands it to Clint, eyebrow raised expectantly. He glances at it, doesn’t take it, looks away.

She sits down on the bed next to him and nudges the case closer. That’s when Clint realizes what she’s done – locked herself in a room with two grown men and a bed, and no reason to trust that she’ll get help should she need it.

It’s about as vulnerable a position as she could possibly put herself, and she’s doing it for him, because she knows something’s wrong, and she’s willing to take the risks to find out what it is.

Clint takes the case, opens it, withdraws the hearing aids, and places them over his ears one at a time. He looks up at Natasha, and at Coulson. They don’t ask, and maybe that’s why he tells them.

“I had a kid, once. It’s their tenth birthday today.”

“It’s not in your file,” Coulson says after a pause.

Clint shrugs. “Doesn’t have to be. Doesn’t need to be. Better this way, anyway. I’d be a terrible parent.”

Natasha and Coulson share a look heavy with meaning, but he doesn’t care enough to parse it. He’s said what he needed to say, assured them he’s not dying. They can go out to the hall where it’s safe and just leave him be.

Not forever. Just for today.

“I’m hungry,” Natasha announces, as if he’d never said a thing.

“So go eat,” he grumbles, already curled back up on his side.

“I can’t,” she says.

“Why not?”

“They won’t let me in the mess.”

Clint lifts his head up off the pillow to demand, “Why the hell wouldn’t they let you into…?”

“It’s steak and eggs day. They don’t trust me to cut my steak without you there to stop me from stealing the steak knife. Or stabbing my guard with it.”

“Why can’t—“

“Clint, I’m hungry. I want my steak and eggs.”

He sighs and sits up, defeated. “Fine. You want your steak and eggs, we’ll get you your steak and eggs. Hand me my pants.”

*

Natasha is needy all day. She makes him wait for her while she attends her therapy appointment, and insist he fetch her two separate slices of pie after lunch. She takes two bites of the second piece and tells him she’s full and that he should finish it, and he does, because he hasn’t eaten anything else today and food shouldn’t go to waste.

She gets to choose, each afternoon, what sort of physical activity to do for the day. Today, she makes Clint convince Coulson and five other base staff to play a game of dodgeball. It’s Clint against the seven of them. He wins, and she says next time, she’s blindfolding him.

At the end of the day, he walks her back to her room, listening to her recount their dodgeball battle in perfect detail. “You don’t have to do this for me,” he interrupts, mid-sentence. “Putting yourself out there just to keep me distracted.”

“It worked, didn’t it?

He leans against the door frame and looks down at her. “You shouldn’t have to fake it for me. I know it makes you uncomfortable.”

“Clint, I think you know…” She trails off, then focuses again after a moment. “I’m never going to _not_ have to fake it. If I’m going to function in the real world. Alongside regular people, people who don’t know me. But for today… there are worse reasons to be disingenuous than to make you feel better.”

Clint feels a knot form in his throat. He swallows around it. “Thanks, kiddo.”

She steps inside and closes the door. He walks back to his own room in a fog, Coulson at his side. They don’t say anything, but Coulson squeezes his shoulder briefly when they part.

Clint turns to watch Coulson walk away. The place where his hand had rested tingles, and he finds himself desperately missing Jackie, and Donna, and even Tim, for a moment.

*

Saturday, July 25, 1998

*

Clint opens up this week’s TV Guide and lays it flat on the coffee table. “Alright,” he says, “it’s five till. What are our choices…? USA is playing _Pretty in Pink_ . We’ve got _Sabrina_ on TCM. Ooh, and they’ve got _Die Hard_ about to start on TNT!”

“Is that appropriate viewing for a fifteen-year-old?” Coulson responds absently as he scans the paper.

“What?” Clint gasps, playing it up a bit because Natasha seems amused. “Come on, it’s a classic!”

“It’s got a content warning.”

Clint flips to the back of the TV guide where all the movie blurbs live. “Rated R for violence, language, some drug use and brief nudity. Natasha, do you think you can handle Bruce Willis shooting bad guys and cussing a lot? To warn you, there may be boobs.”

“Those, I’ve seen,” Natasha replies, and leans over to peer further down the page. “There’s something called _La Femme Nikita_ playing on FX.”

“No!” Clint and Coulson say in unison.

“ _Die Hard_ is fine,” Coulson agrees.

“You’re not a true American until you’ve quoted _Die Hard_ at someone,” Clint adds. “Let’s get you some culture.”

Coulson snorts under his breath and asks, “Streptococcus or E. coli?”

“Oh my god,” Clint groans.

Halfway through the movie, Clint sees Natasha in his peripheral vision as she snags the TV Guide and flips to the back. A minute later the magazine is returned to its exact spot, and Natasha leans into his side a little more than usual.

*

Saturday, August 1, 1998

*

“You do realize that the last time we did this, you broke my clavicle,” Clint says, stepping up to the sparring mat in the base’s small gym. Natasha had decided it was time to get back into fighting shape, and Fury had okayed it, so here Clint was. Four other agents were standing by, just in case, and Agent Coulson was making himself comfortable on the nearby bench.

“You wouldn’t be doing this if you didn’t trust me not to break your face,” Natasha replies, stretching to touch her toes, then lean all the way back into a backbend, then a walk-over.

“I trust you not to break my face,” Clint adds, once she’s standing straight again. “I’m pretty sure the rest of me is fair game, though.”

Natasha shrugs, then flies at him.

*

Tuesday, August 4, 1998

*

Three days later, Clint is laid out on the sparring mat, trying to get his breath back as Natasha, flopped down beside him, attempts to do the same. She’d finally managed to evade Rosita’s Dirty Trick Number Eight, and Clint is incredibly proud and looking forward to the day that Rosita and Natasha get to have an epic throwdown of their own.

(The last time he spoke to any of his friends was the first of the year, when he hugged Donna goodbye. It’s the longest he’s gone without connecting with at least one of them. He hopes they’re okay).

Clint leans his head back to look at Coulson, sitting in his regular spot on the bench where he’d been cheering – for which of them, Clint doesn’t know – just a few seconds ago. “Okay, I’m done. Your turn.”

“I thought you were done,” Coulson replies.

“No, I meant you versus Natasha.”

Coulson visibly hesitates.

“What’s the matter?” Clint teases. “Afraid she’ll beat you? How are you supposed to protect me from her, then?”

At that, Coulson smiles, enigmatic. “Oh, I’m not here to protect you. I’m here to protect her.”

Clint rolls over, hears Natasha do the same so that they’re both staring over at Coulson right-side-up. “What?”

“You’re a twenty-eight-year-old man showing a great amount of interest in an extremely vulnerable teenage girl,” Coulson says dispassionately. “My assignment was specifically to ensure the safety and well-being of the minor in question. I have the authority to take any measures necessary in order to fulfil that assignment.”

Clint sits up, at that, feeling nauseous. “She’s just a kid! I wouldn’t—did you really think I would—?”

He looks over at Natasha, who’s staring at Coulson with the blank face she puts on when she’s shocked. “I could kill him easily,” she says. “He would be dead before any of you could react.”

Coulson nods. “He was also kind to you. He’s probably the first person in a long time to be kind to you without an ulterior motive, and sometimes it’s hard for us to defend ourselves against someone we care about.”

“I wouldn’t ever hurt her!” Clint insists, suddenly frantic that Coulson knows, that _Natasha_ knows she’s safe with him, that she can trust him.

Coulson gives him a long-suffering look. “I think you’d let someone rip both your arms off before you’d let them hurt her. But I’ve been wrong about people before, so I will continue to act as her guardian until such time as it is no longer necessary.”

*

Friday, August 7, 1998

*

The next time they hit the gym, after the awkward conversation they’re pretending didn’t happen, Natasha takes over the mats to do backflips and handsprings and somersaults for an hour. Then she parks herself on the other end of the bench where Clint has been sitting to watch. She steals Clint’s Gatorade and says, “You two should spar next.”

“Excuse me?” Clint asks, glancing over at Coulson, standing a few paces away. He’s been keeping his distance, like he’s afraid Clint is upset with him. Clint doesn’t precisely know how he feels. But right now, Natasha is most important.

“It’s important that I know which one of you would win in a fight,” she says. Her face and her voice give nothing away insofar as her thoughts. Clint is still pretty sure she’s messing with him. But he’s also pretty sure he’s incapable of saying no to her, so he stands up.

They’re all in workout gear, so Clint immediately steps up to the center of the mat and turns back to face them. Natasha is – oh god, this child needs to learn when to stop – Natasha is nudging a reluctant Coulson forward and whispering things that Clint’s aids, no matter how finely-tuned, can’t really pick up. And of course her hair is blocking his view of her lips. Natasha is _not_ subtle.

Coulson steps up onto the mat, and Clint takes a moment to size him up. There really isn’t anything remarkable about him. He’s about an inch shorter than Clint, which is unfortunate. He’s got tough, wiry muscles underneath his tight t-shirt, and Clint knows from having wandered all over the base with him that he’s light on his feet.

Clint doesn’t have the chance to catalog anything else about Coulson before he’s suddenly on the ground, no clue how he got there, his breath knocked out of him and Coulson bearing down with an amused glint in his eye.

Phil Coulson has the most beautiful eyes Clint has ever seen.

Clint doesn’t blush, doesn’t stammer – he just takes a breath and pulls out Natasha Romanov’s Super-Secret Dirty Trick to flip Coulson over his head. Coulson darts out of the way before Clint can continue the roll and pin him, and then it’s on.

*

Back in his room that night, Clint spends some time leaning his head against the wall, muttering, “Shit, shit, _shit_.”

*

Clint can’t help but notice things about Coulson after that.

Coulson guards Natasha because he’s protecting her, because he believes she needs protection, and compassion, and understanding - not suspicion or blame. He is gentle with her in tone, never touches her without her permission, never orders her to do anything except, occasionally, to please consume a vegetable with her dinner before she develops rickets, this is not 19th-century London. (Natasha stares at him blankly for a few seconds the first time he says it, and he holds her gaze evenly until she consents to a side of creamed corn with her hamburger and tater tots, and then he smiles and says, “Close enough.”)

Coulson watches movies with them on the couch in the lounge. He knows all the lines to every nerdy movie they watch, from _Princess Bride_ (Meredith’s favorite) to _Stargate_ (Rosita’s least favorite, which she tolerates because Donna loves James Spader).

When they watch _Forrest Gump_ , Coulson explains all the historical references to Natasha, who only got the Russian version of history, and to Clint, who barely got the American version.

When they watch the old Captain America movie starring Robert Redford, Coulson adds his own commentary, comprised mostly of “That didn’t happen,” “They made that up,” “Cap would never say that,” and “That is scientifically impossible.”

When they watch _Philadelphia_ , Coulson claims a late night meeting, and leaves Agent Monroe to supervise from beside the doorway.

Coulson walks Natasha to her room at the end of the day and wishes her goodnight. It’s there that he and Clint part ways. Clint heads back to his room, and Coulson heads to Agent Monroe’s.

Clint ignores the butterflies in his stomach that appear every morning when Coulson does, concentrates on being there for Natasha as she continues to get back into physical, mental and emotional shape, and doesn’t say anything.

Coulson is straight, and Clint is not, and that’s really all there is to it.

*

Saturday, September 12, 1998

*

“I’m sending you on a mission,” Fury says without preamble once Clint logs onto the video call.

Clint frowns. He hasn’t had a mission since January; everyone knew how that one turned out. “I’m on a mission,” he reminds him.

Fury shrugs, like it doesn’t matter that Clint has responsibilities now - is trying to care for a fifteen-year-old without damaging her irreparably, or worse, pissing her off. “Yes. Now I’m sending you on another one.”

“What about Natasha?” Clint asks. He’s not sure he trusts them with her while he’s away.

“She’ll be fine without you for a few days.”

“...This is a test, isn’t it? Psych wants to see how she handles me being gone.”

Fury grins without humor. “Got it in one.”

Clint puts his face in his hands for just a second, before he lifts his head again and glares at Fury through the camera. “You have run background checks on these people, right? You didn’t just bring them in off the street?”

Fury leans back in his chair. Clint can tell he isn’t exactly pleased with the situation, either. “Your casual disregard for the mental health profession has been noted. Go pack your things.”

*

Sunday, October 4, 1998

*

Clint comes back to the base three weeks later with a split lip, a positively epic black eye, and a rock in his gut. Natasha has been with SHIELD for ten months. This feels like the final test, like a change is coming, like this part of their lives is ending.

It’s three in the afternoon when he gets back, and he finds Natasha and Coulson in the gym. Natasha is on the mat, practicing her backflip it looks like, and Coulson is lounging at the side, smiling fondly and calling out pointers. It’s a scene he’s been part of a hundred times by now; he’s glad they could keep going on as normal without him, even as fear twinges deep in his belly. People are supposed to keep on going without him. It’s not fair of him to expect differently.

Natasha executes another back handspring, loses her balance, starts to fall, and turns it into a forward roll that ends with her on her back, laughing freely. Clint opens the gym door - because he can’t not, can’t hold back when there’s a chance of hearing that sound again - and Natasha turns to look, still smiling.

She catches sight of him, and her smile falls.

Clint swallows. “Hey, kiddo.”

Natasha stands up slowly, silently. Over her shoulder, Clint can see Coulson frown, concerned. Then he can’t see anything, because he’s suddenly got an armful of red-haired, teenaged assassin, and she’s not letting go. She’s squeezing sore muscles and tender bruises, but Clint couldn’t care less.

It’s their first hug.

“I missed you,” Natasha whispers into his shoulder.

“I missed you too, kiddo,” Clint replies, voice rough, and cups the back of her head to hold her close. “You okay?”

Natasha pulls back, and Clint lets go immediately. “I passed their test. No violent rampages, fMRI all green, I’m not a threat.”

“That’s… good,” Clint says, completely unsurprised that Natasha had cottoned on to what SHIELD was up to. “But that’s not what I was asking.”

This time, Natasha just shrugs. “Agent Coulson made me eat kale. And he wouldn’t let me watch _It_.”

Coulson gets up from the mat and makes his way over. He’s smiling. “Kale is good for you,” he says. “And that movie is rated R because it is not appropriate viewing. For anyone. Ever.”

“Just because you’re scared of it doesn’t mean it’s scary,” Natasha says airily, and it’s amazing to watch her so trusting and at ease. “Clint will watch it with me if you won’t.”

Coulson raises his hands in surrender. “Be it on your head.”

Clint grins, and then winces when it pulls on his split lip. Natasha notices, and sobers, her hand reaching up to nearly touch his skin before she pulls away. “Are _you_ okay?” she asks.

“I got in a little bit of trouble, but I handled it.”

Natasha and Coulson both frown. Then Natasha takes a deep breath, and says, “When I become a full agent, I’m going to be your partner, so that no one does that to your face again.”

Clint feels his jaw drop. “When you become – you know this isn’t conscription, you don’t have to join SHIELD when you get out of here, you can do something else.”

She gives him a wry smile. “They can’t exactly set me up in a high school in Connecticut with a set of foster parents.”

Clint flinches.

“It’s not realistic,” she continues, shaking her head. Her gaze shifts to the floor in front of her. “And I wouldn’t want them to. I dream about the things the Red Room did to me, but I also dream about the things I did, and I need to do something about that.”

“I thought that’s why we were sending you to therapy, so you wouldn’t feel guilty about shit that _wasn’t your fault_.”

But Natasha is shaking her head. “It is my fault. I did those things. That’s why I have to make up for it.”

“But you’re just a—“

“Kid?” She looks back up at him and raises her eyebrow. “No. I’m an assassin. And I’d be wasted doing anything else. I’m joining SHIELD.”

Clint turns to Coulson and asks, “Did you put her up to this?”

Coulson gives a helpless shrug. “This is the first I’ve heard of it. I was all for Connecticut.”

He looks back over to Natasha, who is fifteen and stubborn as hell, and he wants to be angry and fight her on this - but he also wants to respect her choices. After a moment of warring indcision, respect reluctantly wins out. He sighs. “If that’s what you want, we’ll make it happen.”

Natasha hugs him again, and he hides his face in her hair.

*

They send Natasha to SHIELD Academy.

Clint supposes it makes sense. Natasha has more combat training than an Army Ranger, speaks more languages than Clint can even name, and has such badass computer skills she could probably hack an Atari to control spy satellites. But all of her knowledge – of the US, of SHIELD – is centered around what she’d need to know in order to be a spy for the KGB. To become a full SHIELD agent – to become a _person_ , she says, though he argues with her about her word choice – she needs more.

Clint knows it makes sense, and he’s glad she’ll get the chance to spend time alone with people her own age, maybe even makes some friends.

He feels uneasily like a parent dropping his kid off at kindergarten for the first time. Natasha isn’t a child, and he’s not her parent. But he can’t say he isn’t going to miss her, or look forward to every phone call.

Natasha leaves for the Academy, and Clint goes back to the strike team.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I cannot give enough thanks to [shadowen,](http://archiveofourown.org/users/shadowen/pseuds/shadowen) who has been with me on this since that fateful day TWO YEARS ago when I sent her an email saying, "I might... I might write a thing...." Her encouragement and cheerleading, especially in those early days when I had a 3,000-word outline but no actual fic, has been so awesome. [Go](http://archiveofourown.org/series/193919) [read](http://archiveofourown.org/series/27398) [her](http://archiveofourown.org/series/119859) [stuff](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3317453) [right](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3202187) [now,](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2958422) [I dare](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1693175) [you](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1498513/chapters/3164941) [to.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1045010/chapters/2089449)


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Extensive thanks to Westgate, Linguistic Jubilee, and my IRL BFF for cheerleading and betaing this chapter. 
> 
> Warnings for depression (characterized by excessive sleeping and ennui), casual sex, and discussions of racism and homophobia.
> 
> Major warning: 9/11 is addressed in this fic. That day is excruciatingly triggering for me and for a lot of people. Feel free to skip the stuff that happens during that day and start up again on Tuesday, December 26, 2001. There are absolutely NO graphic descriptions but stuff is addressed and hoo nelly that's why they call it a trigger.

*

Sunday, May 16, 1999

*

“Agent White is a chauvinist,” Natasha says without preamble when he answers the phone. She always seems to time her calls to when it’s most convenient to his schedule. Which he appreciates, because it lets him put his full attention on her, and in turn he ignores the fact that she isn’t cleared to know his mission schedule.

He tucks the phone receiver into the cradle of his shoulder and sits to pull off his boots. “Agent White, the strategy instructor? Skinny white guy, mid-fifties, big hands?”

“He taught you when you were here?”

“Yeah,” Clint replies. “I made most of my friends in that class. Though I’m still surprised I passed it.”

“Probably because you’re a man,” Natasha replies darkly. “He keeps assigning all the men in the class to be group leader, and no matter how poorly they perform, he gives them higher marks than any of the women, when he allows us to have a turn at all.”

Clint thinks back on that class. He remembers Donna being absolutely brilliant, with Aaron not far behind her. He remembers feeling convinced he was at the bottom of the class every time; Agent White telling him not to be so hard on himself and Rosita getting annoyed; the very first assignment, when he mistook Clint for group leader in Lraaz’s place.

“You know, I think you might be right,” he says.

“Maria Hill wants to set him on fire,” is Natasha’s casual reply.

“It’s so nice to hear you’re making friends at school. Did you go see _The Mummy_ yet? Did you like it?”

“Yes,” she replies quickly.

He pauses. “To which?”

“Yes. Have you seen Phil lately?”

“Uh, random subject change?” Clint comments. “I haven’t seen him since you left for school, kiddo.”

“He’s assigned to the Los Angeles base, though,” she says. “You haven’t seen him?”

“I’ve been busy!” he protests.

“Uh, huh.”

“Can we go back to talking about Brendan Fraser, please?”

*

Saturday, June 5, 1999

*

Clint’s in the TV lounge by his room at about ten at night when the overhead lights flicker twice. He turns, and starts when he sees that it’s Phil in the doorway. “Hey,” he says.

“Hey,” Phil replies. He’s dressed down in khakis and a polo shirt that shows off his biceps. He looks stunning compared to Clint’s ratty jeans and t-shirt. He wasn’t expecting company tonight. “You got a minute?”

“Sure, what’s up? Everything okay?” He waves Phil into the room, and the man walks around the end of the couch to perch on the arm across from Clint.

“Natasha said she called you,” Phil begins, then stops.

Clint waits for a moment for that statement to coalesce into a point, then shrugs and says, “Yeah, last week.”

“Natasha says she’s always the one to make the call - that you never call her.”

Clint blinks and feels his brain stutter. He looks away and explains, “Well… I mean, I don’t want to interrupt her, she’s busy with school and stuff, I don’t want to bother her.”

“Ah,” Phil says, not giving anything away. “Is that why we’ve been on the same base for six months and you haven’t come to find me yet?”

“Wait, what?” he asks, puzzled by the sudden change in topic - not to mention the direct question. “What’s that got to do with me calling Natasha?”

Phil’s brow is furrowed slightly. “You never want to be a bother.”

Clint’s shoulders hunch instinctively at that. He still doesn’t know why, and he still can’t stop it.

“Oh,” Phil says softly, eyes widening, like a really important puzzle piece was just put into place. Clint hasn’t the faintest idea what could have caused it, what connections Phil has apparently made, all from a weird exchange about his telephone habits. “You never want to be a bother.”

“Whatever Nat told you, it’s all vicious lies. Lies and calumnies,” Clint says, attempting to cover his confusion. Phil probably sees right through it.

Phil smiles, more genuine this time. “I sincerely doubt that. In any event, I came by to see what you’re up to.”

Clint shrugs. “Just TV. _Lost in Space_ is coming on in a few.”

“Mind if I stay and watch?”

“Sure,” Clint says, and moves to the side of the couch to give Phil space. Phil sits, and Clint eyes him for a few minutes, waiting for more non-sequiturs. None are forthcoming, and after a while, they both get into the movie. They agree that Gary Oldman is terrifying, and that the time-travel plot doesn’t precisely make sense... and it’s like no time at all passed since their last movie night, back in November.

“I want to do this again,” Phil says when he leaves. “Call me the next time you’re free. I promise to tell you if I’m busy or not.”

Clint ducks his head a little bit - hiding the blush rising from Phil’s intense stare - and says, “I’ll call you.”

*

Saturday, July 10, 1999

*

“Hey, _Wrath of Khan_ is coming on at nine, I don’t know if that’s too short notice but--”

“I’ll meet you in the lounge in twenty,” Phil says quickly. “I’ll bring popcorn.”

“I have Slice and Mr. Pibb,” Clint offers. “Which one do you want?”

“Definitely Slice. See you in nineteen.”

*

Saturday, August 14, 1999

*

“ _Gattaca?_ ”

“Wisconsin,” Phil says.

“...I don’t know that one,” Clint replies, confused.

“I mean I’m _in_ Wisconsin. Sorry.”

“Oh,” Clint says, stomping down a rush of disappointment. “It’s okay. Uh, sorry for interr--”

“I should be back by the weekend, and my mom just gave me the Indiana Jones box set. Want to make a night of it?”

“Your mom?” Clint asks, surprised. He didn’t know moms still gave presents when their kids were grown up.

Phil chuckles. “She feeds my addictions, she’s a terrible enabler. Saturday?”

Clint nods, even though Phil can’t see it. “Saturday.”

*

Wednesday, December 29, 1999

*

By mutual agreement, they spend half of November and most of December watching all of the Star Trek movies. They watch them out of order, because Clint insists that the one with the whales is the best and has to be viewed first. Then they go to see _Galaxy Quest_ in the theater downtown, and it’s so, so easy to sit beside Phil in a dark theater and listen to him laugh.

The next day, Phil is called out on a mission, and doesn’t come back for four months.

*

Friday, March 31, 2000

*

Noelle Walters is a very, very welcome distraction. From the fact that Natasha is a thousand miles away at Ops. And that Phil has been on a mission and incommunicado for what feels like forever. The last person to hug him was Nat, just after New Year’s.

He’s on a six-person team led by Agent Hand. He’s the pilot, and the sniper, and the muscle, and whatever else they need him to be at any given moment. He’s flexible like that. But his infiltration skills leave something to be desired, which is why they have Walters on the team.

The long and short of it is that they’re on a mission in Las Vegas, at the MGM Grand - 30 floors, 5,044 rooms, 170,000 square feet - and Clint’s job is to hang out on a balcony and make sure no one cottons on to the specific way Walters is making her way across the floor.

He hadn’t planned on getting punched in the head, breaking his hearing aid, missing Walters’ shouting and Agent Hand’s orders, losing the data disk they were trying to retrieve, and fumbling their escape.

Everyone makes it out, and there’s no lasting damage, but they completely failed their objective, and it’s all Clint’s fault.

They get back to the jet, and Hand rips him up one side and down the other for, “Insubordination, bullheadedness, arrogance, and a complete and utter disregard for the importance of the mission and the safety of your teammates. Do you have anything to say for yourself?”

Clint swallows and glances around at the rest of the team. He didn’t screw up the mission because of anything Hand has said in the past twenty minutes. He screwed up the mission because he busted a hearing aid. He’s accepted that being deaf is a part of who he is - and Nick has helped a lot with that - but every once in awhile, when things like this happen, all of his insecurities from eleven years ago come roaring right back.

“Well?” Hand demands.

“No, ma’am,” Clint says, and lets the chips fall as they will. Better to have them all think he’s a jackass than to think he’s useless and leave him behind. “I don’t have anything to say.”

“Fine,” Hand says. “When we get back to base, you’re confined to quarters until I decide what to do with you.”

Clint nods. “Yes, ma’am.”

He pilots them back to base, taking care to avoid turbulence and give them the smoothest ride possible. They land an hour later and disembark; Agents Walters and Barbour shoot him sympathetic looks as Hand escorts him to his quarters and shuts the door in his face.

Clint waits until he knows she’s gone, and then punts his plastic garbage can across the room. He wants to punch the wall and throw things until something shatters, but the noise and the damage to his hands will just be more evidence to the team that he can’t keep it together.

He has to keep it together. Barney… No, stop.

He slouches against the wall and reaches up to pull out the faulty aid in his right ear. From the outside it looks fine. But he’s going to have to walk it down to R&D later - whenever Hand feels like springing him - and at least let the folks down there know that it’s on the fritz. Preferably before another mission comes up (not that it’s likely he’ll be going on the next one. Hand is brilliant, but she really has no patience for bullshit).

He pulls the other one out and places them both in the dish on his bedside table. He’s just putting his purple over-the-ear aids in when a knock at the door has him jump, and he curses. He finishes fiddling with the second aid and then stalks to his door and swings it open, ready for a confrontation.

Noelle’s on the other side of the door frame, leaning against the jamb. “So that was terrible,” she remarks casually, like this wasn’t the shittiest day Clint’s had since he dropped Natasha off at Ops.

“Yeah,” he agrees. “It really sucked. Can I help you with--”

“You want to fuck it out?” Noelle interrupts.

He takes a step back in shock and sputters, “Excuse me?”

“Seems like you could use a way to blow off steam. One that’s not fighting or drinking or…” She glances around his quarters. “Or putting dents in things you’d rather not dent.”

“Why me?” he asks. This is insane. Noelle’s leaning halfway into his room now, crowding into his personal space. Clint feels rooted to the floor.

“Because I want to,” she replies. Then she steps closer and, when he doesn’t draw away, leans forward to cup his balls with her hand and bite his neck right above the collarbone. “It’ll be fun.”

Clint gasps. All of the tension he’s been carrying around for the past few hours suddenly transforms into visceral arousal. He wraps his arms around Noelle, pulls her into his room, and kicks the door closed.

Thirty minutes later - maybe forty - possibly closer to forty-five -

Clint’s positioned behind Noelle on the bed, rocking into her as she pushes back onto him, her ass in the air and her weight on her knees and one hand, the other reaching down to rub her clit. She’s already come twice, and when he finally joins her, it goes on for what feels like forever. He laughs, kisses her spine, and pulls out.

That’s when he realizes that the condom has broken, rolled down to the base of his cock, and his come is dripping down her thighs.

His stomach drops. “Oh, shit!”

“What’s the matter? Broke your brain?” Noelle asks as she flops down onto her stomach and stretches.

“No. Shit. The condom broke. Shit.” Images race through his head - broken condoms, pregnancy tests with two blue lines, Jackie’s swollen belly and plump breasts, baby bottles and Noelle’s smile on a tiny face with his nose.

“Oh,” Noelle says, continuing her stretch. “Is that all?”

“Is that all? Is that - shit, shit--”

“Hey,” she says, finally rolling over to look at him. “Why are you panicking?”

“The condom broke!” His mind can’t seem to get beyond that one crucial fact.

“Yes,” she says, drawing the word out slowly. “You know I’m on the most effective birth control available, right?”

“Sorry,” he says, swallowing down the fear and trying to slow his breathing. Noelle obviously feels there’s nothing to worry about. “I know. I just freaked out for a second, there. Sorry.”

Noelle pats him on the arm, then rolls back over. “It’s fine. Get me some Gatorade?”

“Sure,” Clint says. He stands and makes his way on shaky legs to the fridge. He stops in the bathroom to grab a washcloth and dampen it with warm water, then brings both back to the bed.

“Thoughtful,” Noelle comments, cleaning herself up. “I’m going to head out. I’ll see you later?”

“Yeah,” he replies, and goes searching for her pants.

After Noelle leaves, Clint stares down at the phone in his hand. He scrolls through his contact list, frowning. Rosita and Lraaz will just lecture him. Meredith and Donna will tease him. He doesn’t want to make Natasha uncomfortable talking about sex stuff when she’s probably in the middle of homework. And Phil is on-mission.

He closes his phone and goes to bed. When Hand calls him later to tell him he’s confined to quarters for the next three days - and _no_ _more visitors, Barton_ \- he’s mostly just relieved to have an excuse to stay in bed.

*

Monday, April 3, 2000

*

The great thing about Agent Hand is that once you’ve done your penance, she doesn’t hold a grudge. He’s allowed back on the team, and he does his best to stay in line. R&D sends him new aids that have a tacky, foam coating designed to help them absorb impacts and stay more secure without his having to resort to super glue. He’s surprised that they come out more comfortable than the last set.

But he doesn’t go out with his teammates anymore after missions, and he doesn’t talk much with Noelle. The first time he accidentally clams up in front of her, she rolls her eyes at him and mutters something. He doesn’t catch it, but he figures he gets the gist anyway.

*

Saturday, April 22, 2000

*

Clint’s phone buzzes on Saturday morning. He has nowhere to be and no responsibilities, so he’s still in bed, and the vibration is just annoying. He tries ignoring it until it ends, but a minute later it starts up again. Finally, he rolls over and looks at the caller ID.

It’s Phil.

He should be excited. His heart should be thumping. He should be shoving his aids in, answering the phone, jumping out of bed and throwing on fresh clothes because the only reason Phil would call is to announce that he’s back on base.

He turns the ringer off and rolls back to face the wall.

He doesn’t know how much later it is when the flashing light and wall buzzer go off, announcing that there’s someone at his door. He groans and finally sits up, runs his fingers through his hair and stands. He’s in pajamas and it’s Saturday, so he doesn’t get dressed. He just staggers to the door and opens it.

“Hey,” Phil says. He’s got a black eye, but he’s smiling like he’s proud of it. He’s had a haircut since Clint last saw him.

“Can I come in?” Phil asks after a moment of Clint just standing there, staring. He repeats the question in sign.

“Yeah, sorry,” Clint replies, opening the door wider and backing away to let Phil in. “Welcome back. Sorry, I’m not really awake right now. Nice shiner. You ok?”

“Yeah, I’m good,” Phil says, signing at the same time as he speaks aloud. “The black eye is the worst of it. And before you ask, I really did get it walking into a door.”

“Did you?”

“Well, I was being chased by ten guys with guns at the time. But it was definitely the door that caused it.”

Clint huffs. It’s not a laugh, but it’s the best he can manage right now.

“Are you okay?” Phil asks. “Did something happen while I was gone?”

“I’m fine,” Clint says, picking up the book on his side table and then setting it back down. He doesn’t know where to look. Phil waits until Clint’s gaze is back in his general direction before speaking.

“We don’t have to talk about it. But you’re not a very good liar. Just so you know,” Phil adds, a small smile on his face to lighten the tone.

Clint shrugs, resettling his gaze at the corner of the room. Some dust bunnies have collected there. He should probably sweep them up sometime soon. “I know.”

Phil doesn’t say anything for a long moment. Then finally, he says, “I checked the TV guide. If we hurry, we can get over to the TV lounge in time for _U.S. Marshals_. It’s the sequel to _The Fugitive_.”

“I’m kind of tired,” Clint responds. The movie sounds like too much effort.

“Tommy Lee Jones and Robert Downey Jr. are in it,” Phil insists. “Come on, it’ll be fun. I haven’t seen a good movie in four months.”

Clint finally nods and heads to the nightstand to grab his over-the-ear aids. Phil roots around his drawers and the floor until he finds a vaguely clean-smelling pair of pants and t-shirt and throws them at Clint’s head. Clint catches them on reflex, and Phil smirks.

They’re halfway through the movie - Clint’s pretty sure Agent Royce is the bad guy - when Clint finds himself saying, “I had a one-night-stand a couple weeks ago. The condom broke. It’s not a big thing, she’s on birth control. But I freaked out.”

“Ah,” Phil says, sitting up and turning to look at him. He grabs the remote, and the sound on the TV mutes. “That’s understandable, given your history.”

“Yeah, you see? I just got this flash of-- of what if, you know? What if it happened again? At least with--” Here, he lowers his voice. “At least with Jackie, we were together, we were gonna be in it together. Now, though, I don’t want-- I wouldn’t want it to happen like that.”

“Did you talk to her about it?” Phil asks.

“Sort of. She kind of blew me off, said it was no big deal. And now I don’t know...”

“What don’t you know?”

Clint rubs his face with both hands and draws them down to clutch at the back of his neck. “I don’t know if I can do the casual thing. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, casual stuff. It’s just… it’s not what I want. But I’m no good at the not-casual stuff, either, it feels like.”

“Sounds like you’ve had a tough couple of weeks,” Phil says.

Clint shrugs. “Yeah. Life kind of sucks right now.”

“I don’t know about that,” Phil replies evenly. “You have a steady job, a devoted group of friends, a formerly bloodthirsty Russian assassin under your wing. Can’t be too bad.”

“Maybe,” he responds.

Phil gives him yet another one of those long looks. Then he pulls his phone out of his pocket, hits what looks like speed dial 4, sets it to speaker, and lays it on the couch between them.

“Hey Phil!” Natasha answers brightly. “Yes, I ate a vegetable today.”

“I’m very glad to hear that,” Phil replies, smiling his secret Natasha smile that only Clint knows about. “I’m here with Clint. Tell us how school is going.”

“Do you want this in chronological order, or in order of importance?” Natasha asks.

“Surprise us.”

*

Sunday, May 21, 2000

*

Eventually, Clint doesn’t feel like sleep is the only thing worth doing. Natasha calls him regularly with stories from the Academy. He avoids a call from Rosita, but picks up for Meredith, who tells him a hilarious story about going undercover at a high-end restaurant in Miami that ends with her getting written up for fourteen different health code violations. (“Worth it,” she crows.)

With Phil back in L.A., their movie nights start up again. Phil’s on a TCM kick, so they watch _Casablanca_ , _Giant_ , and _How to Marry a Millionaire_. And tonight, it’s _Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner_.

It makes Clint’s heart hurt.

Sidney Poitier is perfect. Katharine Houghton is perfect. Katharine Hepburn is perfect.

He can feel Phil glancing at him intermittently as the movie progresses. He knows Phil is wondering whether they should have watched something else. When Spencer Tracy says his final monologue at the end of the film, Clint finds himself wiping his eyes with his sleeves.

It’s stupid, it’s just a movie. A really good movie. But it hurts. Because of Jackie. Because of his parents. Because of Barney.

“Are you alright?” Phil asks quietly as the credits roll, worry coloring his voice. He’s been so worried about Clint, lately. Clint doesn’t know what to do about it.

“No,” Clint responds honestly. Phil already knows about Jackie. Phil will listen. “My brother hated Jackie, a little bit. I never knew if it was because she was black, or because she reamed him out a couple times too many, or because she was distracting me from my training with Trick… I wondered, though.”

Phil hmms. “Maybe a combination of all of the above?”

“Maybe,” Clint concedes. “Trick never seemed to care, though. So long as I did what he said. Guess he thought it would keep me from leaving. Didn’t work out too well for him.”

“Why’s that?”

Clint shrugs, and raises a hand to rub the scar through his t-shirt. “He’s the one who shot me.”

Phil makes an inquisitive noise, but Clint’s done talking. He doesn’t say anything else for the rest of the night. Phil lets him get away with it.

*

Saturday, August 12, 2000

*

Clint dives over the back of the couch and lands perfectly on the left-hand cushion, TV guide already in hand. “How about…. _In & Out_? With Kevin Kline?”

“I’ve seen it,” Phil says, sitting down in a more sedate fashion.

“Is it any good? What’s it about?”

Phil takes a moment to pop open his soda and dig a cookie out of the package of Milano cookies he’d brought to this evening’s event, and then explains,“It’s about a man who realizes he’s gay. But it’s a comedy, so for once no one dies.”

“So it’s the opposite of _Philadelphia_ , then?” Clint asks, remembering suddenly that Phil had skipped that one when he watched it with Natasha last year. He snags a cookie.

“It was inspired by Tom Hanks’ Oscars acceptance speech,” Phil explains. He takes a long drink from his can of Slice and adds, “They did okay with it.”

“Alright, sold,” Clint says, and turns the closed captioning on.

The movie is funny. Clint points out that Kevin Kline is kind of adorable. Phil responds that Tom Selleck looks strange without his ubiquitous mustache.

The credits roll, and Clint says, “It’s nice to see something with a happy ending.”

Phil says, “The happy ending is the only reason I can even watch this.”

Clint starts, and looks over at Phil, leaning against the opposite corner of the couch. He’s fiddling with the pop top of his soda can. He draws a breath and asks, “Because of the gay stuff?”

Phil huffs and rolls his eyes, and says with no small amount of sarcasm, “Yeah. That’s it.”

“Oh,” Clint responds, something tugging deep in his chest. It’s one thing to know that Phil is straight. But Clint definitely isn’t, and it’s quite another thing to think that Phil might not be okay with that. He looks away. “Okay. That’s… fine I guess.”

There’s a tap on his foot - Phil nudging him with his heel, leg stretched out across the cushion. He’s frowning. “It’s not that. It’s not you. I'm... emotionally constipated, you know that.”

A laugh bubbles up out of him, and he lets it free. “Yeah, I kind of had that figured out.”

Phil smiles back, then lets it drop. He runs his fingers through his hair and leaves his hand resting on the back of his neck. His head tilts back, and he stares up at the crummy drop ceiling that still has the stain from when Clint managed to explode a can of Mr. Pibb all over the room.

“I dated a guy in high school,” Phil begins. He pauses, as if to collect himself, and continues, “It was a... weird situation, he was… well. Eventually we got caught, and I got kicked out of JROTC. That was kind of my dad’s dream for me, so I took it pretty hard. Fury heard about it, and ended up recruiting me to SHIELD, instead, as soon as I graduated. I owe him a lot.”

Clint thinks back to the long string of Phil’s girlfriends he’s witnessed over the past year or two, and wonders, “So do you not date guys anymore, 'cause of what happened? Are you, are you okay with…?”

Phil turns his head and gives Clint another long, inscrutable look. Clint isn't asking with any kind of personal motive. He's asking because it sounds like a defining moment for Phil, and he cares about that, and he doesn’t want Phil to… to be hurting, after all this time.

Phil must see some of that in his face. He turns his gaze back to the ceiling, brow furrowing. “I’ve gotten over it. I’m not traumatized or anything. I stick to dating women because women are... easier. For a lot of reasons. Some of them probably aren't that great.”

Clint frowns, because all of those girlfriends he’s met have been, from his perspective anyway, really great people. “Who, the women?”

“What? No. The reasons.”

“Like what?”

Phil spreads his hands out in front of him and shrugs helplessly. “SHIELD isn't military, but there's still a lot of rampant machismo. It's always a competition. Look at guys like Garrett or Barbour. Can you see them being...?”

It’s a terrifying thought. Clint shakes his head. “No, not really.”

“With women, it's different. The expectations are different. I can relax more,” Phil says, sinking further into the couch cushions. “I don't have to front as much.”

Oh.  Clint thinks about Dustin, and all the ways he would project an aura of confidence and badass while hiding Clint away like a dirty secret. And about Tim, who took weeks and weeks to state his intentions and then quietly slipped away because Clint couldn’t open up the way that he wanted him to.

“Is it that they’re men? Or do you just have a hard time opening up anyway?” he asks. Phil turns his head quickly to look at him, and Clint has enough self-awareness to add, “Sorry, not trying to be a jerk, here.”

“No, it’s okay,” Phil says. “You might…. have a valid point.”

“Yeah?” Clint asks, smiling a little.

“Don’t let it go to your head,” Phil says back, and just like that, the tense atmosphere lifts.

*

Saturday, June 23, 2001

*

In June, Nat graduates from SHIELD Academy. Fury immediately whisks her and her friend Maria off for a six-month mission in locations unknown, and Clint tries not to let his disappointment show when she says goodbye to him. They won’t have any more Sunday phone calls until she gets back.

When Natasha in gone, Phil and Clint settle down in their lounge to watch _The Three Musketeers_ \- the Disney version from 1993 - because Phil is in a Kiefer Sutherland kind of mood and Clint has no problems with this, even if it means having to put up with Chris O’Donnell’s mediocre acting.

When D’Artagnan reclaims his father’s sword from Rochefort, Clint says offhandedly, “I don’t have anything of my dad’s.”

“Really? Nothing?”

Clint shakes his head. “No. When they took us away… after the car crash… all we got to bring with us were clothes. Everything else got donated or thrown away.”

“That’s… awful,” Phil says, and Clint thinks about Phil’s collections, strewn across his apartment, his office, and probably his mother’s house as well. Heck, there’s probably a Captain America trading card in his wallet right now.

He imagines Phil dying, and all of his things being swept away like trash. Phil’s right. It is awful.

*

Saturday, July 28, 2001

*

A few weeks later, Phil invites himself into Clint’s quarters and hands him a large manila envelope. “What’s this?” Clint asks, pulling out a thick piece of paper with an embossed stamp in the corner.

“I wrote to the county clerk for Waverly, Iowa and got a copy of your parents’ marriage certificate,” Phil explains. He’s leaning forward a little on his toes, like he’s excited but doesn’t know whether he should show it.

“No way,” Clint says. He skims the writing and there they are: his parents’ full names. And the full names of his grandparents. He… he didn’t even know those. His grandfather’s name was Samuel. “Wow.”

“There’s something else,” Phil adds, reaching into his jacket pocket. “I found the church where they got married and spoke to the pastor. He went through their old records and found this.”

He pulls out an old black and white Polaroid photo, the kind they used to have back in the sixties, and hands it to Clint. The photo shows a young woman in a white dress. She’s laughing. The man standing next to her could be Barney in another life. Faded handwriting in the margin spells out, _Mr. & Mrs. Barton, 5/2/65_.

Clint stares.

“I know it’s not your father’s sword, but…” Phil says, more tentative this time. Then he asks, “It’s not too presumptuous, is it?”

“No, this is… this is great,” Clint rasps, then clears his throat. “So, um, movie?”

Clint can’t say what movie they watch, who was in it, or what happened. All he can do is stare down at the photo, and then over to Phil, and then back down at the photo.

*

Tuesday, September 11, 2001

*

Lraaz is in town, just off from a long-term undercover mission in Melbourne. She’s staying at the Marriott for a few days until her new place is ready, because she would rather be pampered and close to her favorite civilian shops and restaurants. So this morning, Clint has schlepped his way across town to take advantage of her hotel’s free coffee and continental breakfast, planning to spend the day with her while she shops for scarves and cute handbags.

They’re just sitting down at one of the tables in the lobby when the TV in the corner starts showing the footage. Then their phones light up with an alert - that the L.A. SHIELD base has been closed, no one going in or out, and all agents should shelter in place and await instructions.

“Did they say what flight it was?” Lraaz asks. “Did they say where it was coming from?”

Clint shakes his head. “I didn’t catch it. How come?”

“My brother is supposed to be flying in from Heathrow today,” she replies, voice tight. “We were going to get together in Chicago this weekend.”

Clint takes her hand, and glances around the room. It’s a Tuesday, but it’s a downtown hotel, which means there are more than a few out-of-towners in business wear ignoring their coffee right next to them. Lraaz had been enjoying wearing her duppatta again after months of field work; now, all Clint can see is how much she stands out. Some people are already glancing at her. They aren’t hostile yet, but…

“We’re not going into work today,” Clint says, gently as he can. He tugs her hand until she turns her head away from the screen and looks at him. “Let’s go back up to the room.”

“My brother was flying in today,” she repeats.

Clint stands and pulls her up with him. “Upstairs, and we’ll start making phone calls.”

They make it upstairs and turn the room TV back on just in time to see the South Tower collapse.

They sit side-by-side on the bed, hands clasped tightly, and watch it all unfold.

Mehdi calls after midnight from Gander, Newfoundland, where his flight had been diverted that morning. He’s fine, he says. Shaken up, but safe. The Canadians are lovely and taking good care of him, and can Lraaz please call Altaf and Hasan and let them know he’s okay?

Then his time is up, and he has to go.

Lraaz makes two phone calls, after. Clint’s used to hearing her talk at length to her siblings in Urdu; he likes the way the language rolls over him, without his needing to worry about figuring out what’s being said. This time, though, she sticks strictly to English, and keeps the conversations short.

Lraaz has always done her crying in private. Clint supposes this is a good time to make an exception. After she gets off with her sister, she leans into Clint and cries on his shoulder. He hugs back.

They’re still up at three a.m. when the room phone rings. Clint is closer - and more suspicious - so he grabs it and answers, “Yes?”

“Clint?” Rosita asks loudly. He’s never heard her this frantic. “Jesus, tell me you have Lraaz there with you.”

“I have her, you want her?”

“ _Now_ , Clint!” She barks.

Clint mouths “ _Rosita_ ” at Lraaz, and at her nod, passes the phone over.

“Hello, Rosita,” she says. Clint can’t hear Rosita’s reply, but whatever she says makes Lraaz sigh as all the tension exits her body at once.

“Yes,” she’s answering now. “Clint is taking very good care of me. Yes…. yes… in Newfoundland… yes… okay. I will. I love you, too. Goodnight.”

Clint’s eyebrows shoot up. Lraaz hands him the receiver wordlessly and he places it back on the cradle. “Everything okay?”

“Yes,” Lraaz says. She looks exhausted. “We can go to sleep, now.”

*

Tuesday, December 25, 2001

*

Natasha is still gone when Christmastime rolls around. Clint had been hoping to spend the day with her. Phil heads home to Wisconsin to see his family, and Clint packs his bags and makes his way to spend the holiday in Chicago with Donna, who hasn’t been invited to a family event since April’s wedding.

Donna picks him up from the airport and hugs him for a long time. “Hey, you okay?” he asks, patting her on the shoulder as she clings. He lets her hold on for as long as she wants.

“I’m fine,” she eventually says, drawing back. “After September, I just…”

Clint finishes the sentence for her. “Need to get your hands on everyone and make sure they’re okay?”

“Yeah, that,” she says, unembarrassed.

“Come on,” Clint replies, wrapping his arm around her shoulder and leading her out into the cold, windy sunlight of Chicago. “Did you make cookies?”

“You know I did,” Donna replies, smiling as she tucks her curly hair into the hood of her coat.

“Then let’s get Christmas started.”

They order massive amounts of take-out and watch _White Christmas, The Nightmare Before Christmas, The Muppet Christmas Carol,_ and _Die Hard_ (Donna hates _The Christmas Story_ so they resolutely avoid the marathon). They field calls from Lraaz, Rosita, Aaron and Meredith (who waxes lyrical about her father’s Hot Buttered Rum for ten minutes before switching to another seasonal favorite, How Many Kinds of Cookies I Have Eaten Today).

Phil calls, too. He only has time to wish Clint a Merry Christmas before his mother says something in the background and he has to hang up. Clint smiles down at his phone, then glances up to see Donna looking at him oddly.

“What?” he asks.

“Pass me an egg roll, please,” is all Donna says.

*

Friday, December 28, 2001

*

Nick Fury, Maria Hill and Natasha Romanov return from their super-secret training mission the same day Clint gets back from Chicago. Shaking Nick’s hand, having him pound him on the back with a one-armed hug, centers Clint in a way that only time with Nick can accomplish (Natasha’s aren’t the only phone calls he’s missed terribly).

But it’s when he gets Natasha into his arms, that he finally feels, for the first time in years, like he can relax.

Then, of course, Natasha looks up at him and says, “The next showtime for _Lord of the Rings_ is in half an hour. Do you have your wallet?”

“Not much time for movies while you were off in,” he pauses to stick his nose in her hair and take a deep inhale, “Sri Lanka?”

Natasha doesn’t even blink. “Maria and I snuck out to see Harry Potter last month; Nick nearly killed us when we came back.”

“Worth it?”

“What do you think?”

*

Tuesday, January 1, 2002

*

In January, Nick Fury is promoted to Director of SHIELD, Clint is promoted to Level Five, and Natasha is promoted to Clint’s partner in the brand-new Strike Team Delta. More importantly, though, is that Clint moves into an off-base apartment in Boyle Heights. Because that’s apparently what you do when you reach Level Five.

He’s had his own space before - in the house he shared with Jason and Eric, the dorms at the Academy and his quarters on base - but an entire apartment? His own kitchen, bathroom, living room and closets? It’s something he’s never experienced before in his life, and he’s not quite sure how to handle it.

Not to mention, $750 per month in 2002 sounds a helluva lot more money than $100 in 1988. But then, he doesn’t have to hide away from house parties and passive-aggressive notes on the fridge anymore, either. So maybe it’s worth it.

The place comes furnished with the basics. After their first mission together, Natasha and Phil follow him home and take over his couch to watch Kiefer Sutherland chase down terrorists. When this starts to become a habit after missions, Clint makes the largest purchase of his life so far: An L-shaped sectional couch that takes over the entire main living space of the apartment.

The first time Phil and Natasha fall asleep on the couch on either side of him, he starts to think that the entire new-apartment ordeal might actually be worth the effort and the rent. A month later, he buys a bigger TV. The following month, he orders TiVo and starts recording everything that looks like it might interest Phil or Natasha.

“I’m never going in the ocean again,” Clint says halfway through _Jaws_. “It’s fresh water only for me from here on out.”

Phil laughs. “You realize bull sharks can survive for several months in fresh water, right? They’ve found them in the Mississippi as far north as Missouri.”

Clint scowls and throws popcorn at him. “Missouri is a terrible place anyway. They can keep their stupid freshwater sharks.”

(Natasha gives him a stuffed shark for his next birthday. They go to Japan for classified reasons, and Phil takes him out for shark fin soup. Clint hates them both.)

They spend two years alternating missions and movie nights. They watch _Singing in the Rain_ , which Natasha hates because nothing explodes. They watch _Monty Python and the Holy Grail_ , which Clint has seen before because Meredith thinks it’s educational, and Phil is inclined to agree.

They go see _Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets_ at midnight the night it’s released. When the girl in line next to them tells Natasha, “Your dads are _adorable,_ ” Clint flushes red, Phil pretends not to hear, and Natasha smirks.

“Take your seat, _Dad_ ,” she says when they get to their row inside the theater. Clint doesn’t know what shows on his face - all he feels is a sudden tightness in his throat - but as soon as Nat sees it, she drops the smile and doesn’t call him that again.

*

Saturday, February 7, 2004

*

“I’m going to miss our next movie night, sorry,” Phil says when they’re halfway through _Batteries Not Included_ and all the way through a six-pack of IPA. “I've been assigned to a special project, eyes-only.”

Clint’s stomach flips, but it’s Natasha who asks, “You're leaving the team?”

“No!” Phil blurts, then adds, more calm, “Of course not. It's only for a few days a month. I'll still run missions with you, I'll just have less free time in between.”

“Oh,” Clint says, swallowing down his relief. “What's it for?”

Phil winces, which means he knows they’re not going to like his answer. “It's classified, sorry.”

Natasha shoots a look at Clint, then redirects it back to Phil. “Is it safe?” she asks. “I'm not comfortable trusting other people to watch your back.”

Phil shakes his head. “Administrative only, I promise.”

Phil is true to his word over the course of the next several months. He joins them in the planning, execution and cleanup after missions. But instead of going back to Clint’s with them for movies and takeout during their downtime afterward, he's packing a small rolling suitcase with clean clothes and heading right back out again.

They start to see dark circles growing under his eyes. He's still on point during work, that hasn't changed. But the few evenings when they can get him to come out to Boyle Heights, he drinks Clint's beer until he falls asleep on the sectional, and never makes it to the end of the movie. They don’t bother trying to wake him up to go home; Natasha covers him with a blanket and Clint puts a glass of water on the end table by his head. He figures they’ll talk in the morning.

But by the time Clint wakes up those mornings, Phil's already gone and heading out of town, leaving only an apology on a post it note and empty bottles in the sink.

*

Saturday, May 8, 2004

*

Phil lets himself in when Clint and Natasha are curled up on the couch, halfway through _On Golden Pond_ , and he's the worst they've ever seen him. Clint is frozen on the spot, staring at the rumpled suit, at the sagging skin, at the heavy bags under Phil’s clouded blue eyes. Natasha’s faster and more thoughtful, luckily, and is by Phil's side in a flash.

“Are you alright?” Nat asks him, outwardly concerned as she walks Phil across the room and eases him down on the couch next to Clint. She sits down on the other side of Phil and keeps her arm wrapped around his side.  
  
Phil leans into her shoulder and closes his eyes, not responding to her question. He’d been gone for ten days straight this time, and they haven’t heard his voice that whole time.  
  
Clint catches Natasha's eye, and she jerks her chin at Phil. Okay.

“Phil,” Clint begins, his voice as gentle as he can manage. “I know this project is important, but it's really doing a number on you. Isn't there anybody who can help share the load?”

Phil lets out a short, broken laugh. “No," he says, shaking his head. “But it doesn't matter. Project's over.”

“Over?” Clint asks.

“Completely. This week was the end of it. No more going away.... No more anything.” His voice is hollow.

“Phil…” Clint trails off. What is there to say? The project and all its details are classified, Phil had said. He won't let any of them out, even to vent. Even to find comfort from whatever has obviously been tearing him apart.

Well, Phil doesn't have to talk for them to comfort him, Clint decides. He eases Phil back against the cushions; Natasha follows, curling in against Phil's side, tucked under his arm. Clint steps quickly into the kitchen, grabbing beers, a block of monterey jack cheese, half a box of Ritz crackers, and the last of the grapes left in the bowl: their movie night mainstays. He brings them out, arranges the food on the coffee table, and hands Phil the beer.

They restart the movie from the beginning. After a few minutes, Phil's trembling eases, and he dozes off.

Clint sighs in relief. “Thank god that's over,” he says.

Natasha hums in quiet agreement. “Now he’s home for good.”  


*

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (...If you're here because of Under Pressure chapter 7, I salute you.)


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's my birthday, so here's some fic.
> 
> WARNINGS oh god the warnings:  
> -There is a plane crash and it sucks, jumping and parachuting is involved. Everyone is okay!  
> -A character goes through alcoholic detox without medical intervention, resulting in hallucinations, delusions, vomiting, seizures and more. It's very upsetting for all involved.  
> -Other general warnings for sex, crying, people yelling at each other, and depression.
> 
> Many thanks to [Westgate](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Harkpad), [Linguistic Jubilee](http://archiveofourown.org/users/LinguisticJubilee/pseuds/LinguisticJubilee) and [Laura Kaye](http://archiveofourown.org/users/laurakaye/pseuds/Laura%20Kaye) for the beta bonanza.

Thursday, June 3, 2004

*

The mission is a complete wash. The tip they’d gotten about a potential powered individual in Independence, California, turned out to be a very clever teenage girl with a well-trained border collie and a lot of imagination. Phil has a long talk with her parents while Clint and Natasha wait outside, and then they make the short walk back up Route 395 to the tiny airfield where their quinjet is parked.

“So that was…” Phil says as the three of them walk up the ramp.

“Pointless?” Clint asks, hitting the button to close the ramp up behind them.

They all begin disarming themselves, removing excess guns and bullet-proof vests. As he unhooks his utility belt, Phil mutters, “I could use a drink after that.”

Natasha snorts, removing her wrist cuffs. “That was nothing.”

“Exactly,” Phil replies. “I always need a drink after the nothing ones.”

“And the not-nothing ones?” Clint asks.

“For those…. two drinks. And a cigarette.”

Clint lets out a short laugh. “Those things’ll kill you, Phil.”

Phil raises an eyebrow. “They can try,” he murmurs, and it’s all Clint can do not to just… something. Something he shouldn’t do.

“At least we got out of the base,” Clint says. “Got some fresh air.”

Natasha throws a boot at him. “I much prefer the air in my room, which is quiet and calm and kept at a consistent 70 degrees.”

“Now, now. All video game and no spying make Nat a dull girl.”

“Get us in the air, Barton, and I might not completely destroy you in the first five minutes of Mario Kart.”

Free of the last vestiges of their non-mission, Clint heads up to the cockpit with a, “Ma’am, yes, ma’am!”

They settle in - Clint up front in the pilot’s seat, Natasha sprawled in the seat next to him with a book, and Phil in the back doing god-knows-what. They’re flying over Sequoia National Forest when it happens: the entire control panel flickers wildly, and then goes dark.

“Fuck!” Clint says, taking in the situation with a quick glance. One failed display can be enough to bring a ‘jet down, but when the entire thing goes dark… “Parachutes, now.”

He hears Nat and Phil jump into action behind him while he hammers on the controls, trying to get a good reading, a response, a distress signal even, but nothing works.

Then the engines cut out, both at once, and gravity starts to take over.

Clint hits the control to open the bay door, but of course, it doesn’t work, because that’s the kind of day he’s having. He cuts a glance over his shoulder - Phil is at the emergency override in the back, but that appears to be disabled, too. Then Nat and Phil are by his side, Nat is grabbing him and wrapping her chute’s straps around his shoulders, and then Phil is unloading both his guns into the forward windshield, and then it shatters and they’re jumping.

It all happens in the space of about 20 seconds.

He holds tight to Natasha as the chute opens and digs the straps into his back and arms, but it holds both their weights and that’s all that matters, really. He looks up to check on Nat; she’s grinning, because Natasha Romanov is a secret adrenaline junkie who is going to give him a heart attack one day.

He turns his head just in time to see the quinjet crash into the side of a mountain.

*

“Remember when you said you wanted a drink?” Clint asks once they land and take stock of their injuries (rope burn and a few cuts from the shattered windshield; nothing life-threatening). “I’m ready for that whenever you are.”

“What the hell happened?” Phil asks.

“I don’t know. One minute everything was fine, the next - total meltdown, nothing working, I’m not sure if my distress signal even went out.”

Phil frowns. “All things considered, we should assume that it didn’t get out and that we’re on our own until SHIELD realizes what happened and sends a search team. Any idea where we are?”

“Sequoia National Forest,” Clint says. “Just south of the national park.”

“Awesome, I’ve been wanting to go camping,” Phil says lightly. “You know, the sequoia tree is the biggest tree on the planet? It’s not the tallest, but it holds the most volume.”

Clint stares at him for a moment, then says, “Phil Coulson, you are the second-biggest nerd I have ever met.”

Phil raises an eyebrow. “Who’s the biggest?”

Clint points silently at Natasha, who is using this time to pack up her parachute and be generally useful. She doesn’t look up as she says, “My book went down with the ‘jet. You’re buying me a new one.”

“It wasn’t the autographed one, was it?”

Natasha looks up, then, to shoot him a look full of disdain. “I do not take JK’s signature with me on missions, Barton.”

“Okay, okay,” Clint says. “So are we waiting for rescue, or are we hiking out of here ourselves?”

“I don’t mind the walk,” Phil says. “And I don’t like being a sitting duck.”

“Same,” Natasha says.

*

Because it was already six in the evening when they left Independence, they decide to camp for the night where they are. Phil starts a fire, Clint builds a rudimentary bow, Natasha carves arrows, and they crack jokes all night, as if it was just another evening in front of the TV for them.

In the morning, they set out in good spirits, snacking on the granola bars that both Clint and Natasha had stashed in the pockets of their tac pants.

“I’m surrounded by food hoarders,” Phil says through a mouthful of granola.

“I’m sorry, are you not hungry? I’ll take that back, then,” Natasha replies, reaching for the bar in his hand.

He dodges out of the way, chuckling, and says, “I didn’t say it was a _problem_. Obviously I need to pick up the habit.”

*

Friday, June 4, 2004

*

Their second night in the woods, they have rotisserie rabbit for dinner thanks to Clint’s shooting. They’re a little quieter this time, but it’s summer, no one is chasing them, and they have every expectation of making it out of their predicament with nothing worse than a few scratches and blisters. Clint takes his aids out to conserve the batteries; he trusts Natasha and Phil to be his ears.

*

Saturday, June 5, 2004

*

The third day, Clint doesn’t realize until noon that Phil hasn’t spoken all morning. “You okay?” he asks when they stop for a rest.

“I’m fine,” Phil says, rubbing his eyes as he eases himself down to sit on the ground. “Just tired.”

“Okay,” Clint replies, stretching his legs out in front of him. He can definitely relate.

But Phil doesn’t perk up, and he asks again while they set up camp again that evening, stretching one of the parachutes out on the ground, with the second one acting as a cover.

“I said I’m fine, Clint, leave it alone!”

Clint takes a quick step back at Phil’s shout, dropping his corner of the ‘chute. Phil catches the movement, and sighs. “I’m sorry. That was uncalled for. I just… I’m tired of roughing it. I miss coffee.”

Clint just nods, and sits down on their makeshift bed.“So were you faking it about liking the woods, when you really hate it?”

Phil lifts one shoulder in a shrug. “I like the woods fine,” he says. “I’m just overtired.”

“How about we all sleep in in the morning?” Clint asks, just as Natasha returns to the clearing with a freshly-filled bottle of water.

She hears him and nods. “A late start won’t hurt us.”

“No,” Phil says, shaking his head. “I just want to get home.”

*

Sunday, June 6, 2004

*

Phil screams them all awake that night, yelling something unintelligible. When Clint goes to shake him out of the nightmare, Phil swings his fist, clipping Clint in the temple before he staggers upright. “Fuck off!” he shouts, close enough and loud enough for Clint to parse without his aids in.

He staggers a few yards away from them, then collapses back on the ground. By the time Clint recovers from the punch and goes over to check on him, he’s fast asleep again. Clint rubs his temple and shares a look with Natasha. She looks as confused as he feels.

“What was he yelling?” Clint asks, signing in the moonlight.

Nat swallows and presses her lips together in a tight line. “He was begging someone not to die.”

Clint winces. He’s had that nightmare.

In the morning, Phil is shaky and pale and apologetic when he sees the bruise on Clint’s face. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what I thought I was doing, I didn’t realize who you were, it’s no excuse, I shouldn’t have reacted like that.”

“It’s fine, Phil,” Clint finally says when he manages to get a word in edgewise. “I’ve done worse to myself walking out of the shower. No harm done.”

“Okay,” he replies, sagging. “Okay. That’s… okay.”

They make a late start, and the going is slow, because Phil is impossibly distracted: jumping at the slightest of sounds, fidgeting with his jacket and belt and boot laces, peering around suspiciously into the woods, flinching back from branches in his path. Clint keeps his aids in and on.

Mid-afternoon, Natasha calls a break. “I’ll be right back,” Phil says (because he’s too mature to say something like, “I need to piss,” which is what Clint says).

When Phil doesn’t return after several minutes, Clint turns to find Natasha looking at him worriedly. “Something’s wrong with him. Something beyond a simple nightmare.”

“No shit,” Clint says, rubbing the back of his head. “Any ideas?”

“Nothing,” Natasha replies, shrugging. “The mission was a wash, nothing dangerous to come into contact with. If he had any health issues, we’d know about it already. Maybe he picked up something out here. A tick, or something in the water.”

“Maybe,” Clint agrees. “Means we gotta get out of here soon.”

Natasha opens her mouth to respond, then frowns and turns her head to listen. After a moment, Clint hears it, too - Phil’s panicked shouting. They both jump to their feet and take off into the woods.

They find Phil hunched over, his back to a tree, breathing harshly and staring around them with wide, terror-filled eyes. “What’s happening? What’s happening?” he demands. “Where are--?”

Clint falls to his knees in front of Phil and gently takes his hands. “Phil. It’s fine. You’re safe. You’re having a panic attack, okay? That’s all it is, it’s a panic attack. You’re safe. Just breathe. Can you breathe with me, Phil?”

Phil gasps, drawing in a deep breath, and then lets it out slowly.

“There you are. That’s it. Keep on breathing with me, Phil.”

Clint keeps eye contact with Phil as he talks him down, breathing with him and squeezing his hands reassuringly. Natasha is next to him, taking Phil’s pulse and wiping the sweat off Phil’s forehead. Slowly, they calm Phil down as much as they can. They give him water, have him lie down with his head in Clint’s lap as Natasha lays the fabric of her parachute over him like a blanket as he shakes.

It’s obvious they’re not going any further today. Phil doesn’t calm down so much as zone out, staring out at the trees searchingly, ignoring - or not hearing - their questions about his symptoms.

After another hour, Clint and Natasha trade places. When he takes Phil’s hands, he notices for the first time just how hard they’re trembling. That’s when realization makes his stomach drop.

“Phil? Hey, Phil?” Clint leans close. “Hey. When was the last time you had a drink, Phil?”

“What?” Phil asks, turning his head to look up at him blearily. “Clint?”

Clint glances up at Nat’s face, then back down to Phil again. “Have you had a lot to drink lately, Phil?”

“Drink? No, I emptied it. Cabinet’s empty. Need to buy more, for next time,” Phil replies, voice shaking. Then his eyes lose what little focus they’d gained, and he doesn’t say anything else. Clint sits back on his heel and lets out a long breath. “Shit.”

“What is it?” Nat asks.

“I think he’s got the DT’s,” Clint says, heavily. He’s seen it before. It didn’t end well. Hospitals are expensive.

Natasha stares down at Phil, then looks back up at Clint. Her expression cycles from confusion, to deep pain, to resolve. “If he is going through alcoholic detox, he needs treatment, immediately.”

“I don’t think we can move him any further. He’s just going to get worse from here on out.”

They stare at each other for a few moments. Then Clint says, “Be careful.”

Natasha nods and jumps to her feet. She quickly goes through her jacket and pockets, dumping everything but the water and the glucose tablets. She tightens her laces, and then bends down to kiss Phil’s forehead. “Don’t die,” she says.

Phil grabs her hand so tightly that Clint has to pull his fingers off one by one to get him to let go of her. “No, no, no, it’s not safe, don’t send her away! Natasha! Don’t send her away, she’ll die!”

Natasha sets off at a run, and Phil screams until he’s hoarse for her to come back, that she’s going to die, they’re all going to die, she can’t leave him like this. Nothing Clint says can calm him.

A few hours after Natasha leaves, when the sun is sending out orange stripes through the forest, Phil… loses touch. He no longer understands that Natasha left to find help - he’s convinced she died in the crash. He mutters and rambles, talks about dust in an empty house, empty hangers, empty cupboards. He’s alone, he says, he’s all alone now.

The trembling gets worse, and Clint wraps him tighter in the parachute to try and keep him warm as the air cools.

Darkness falls. Phil forgets about Natasha, and forgets who Clint is - Clint is an undertaker, Clint is a ghost, Clint is a thief. He tries to get free of the fabric of the chute, but only tangles himself up more with his struggling. He scratches at his face and at his arms, says he’s trapped in an attic, in a coffin, there are spiders everywhere, cobwebs and spiders all over him.

Then he stops seeing Clint at all.

Clint lights a fire, and it terrifies Phil so much that Clint immediately douses it. Caught up in hallucinations Clint can only guess at - the forest is on fire, house is on fire, they’re going to put him in a box and burn him, he’s going to die, let him die - Phil shakes and moans and cries through the night and into the morning.

*

Monday, June 7, 2004

*

The seizures start at noon.

The forest is warm, the midday sun filtering down through the canopy, making the leaves shine and the air smell fresh, cutting through the damp. Clint thinks he could see himself enjoying it under different circumstances, if he wasn’t holding Phil’s head as he shakes and shivers and vomits onto the forest floor. He barely made it back with fresh water from the creek before the shaking began.

“[What’s happening]? Where [are we]?” Phil asks, after the first seizure. Clint’s had to take out his aids to save the batteries - and, if he’s honest, to save his heart from Phil’s cries.  He’s going to hear them in his dreams.

Clint can’t tell if clarity has returned to Phil’s senses. He says, “You’re fine. You’re just a little sick. You’re going to… you’re going to be okay.”

Phil peers up at him, terrified, and asks, “[Where]-s [my] [m--]?”

“It’s going to be okay, I promise.” Clint tries to smile reassuringly, even as Phil’s eyes lose focus again. He thinks maybe this means that Phil is getting better… but then a few minutes later, he starts to shake again, and the seizure lasts even longer.

Clint counts four seizures between noon and nightfall, and not once in between does Phil come aware enough to recognize him, to know where they are and what’s happening to him, to answer questions about how he feels and where it hurts. All Clint can do is nurse him as best he can, clean him up, feed him bits of granola bar and sips of water and talk to him soothingly.

He hasn’t had to care for another person like this in more than a decade. Not since the time in the circus when Jackie had developed bronchitis, and the other girls had kicked her out of their trailer for coughing too much and too loudly. Clint had tucked her into his bunk, told Barney to put in earplugs if he didn’t like it, and did everything he could think of to help her until the fever broke and the coughing stopped.

Jackie didn’t move back in with the other girls. A few months later, she told Clint she’d missed a period - standing tall, her chin jutting out in challenge - and Clint had felt nothing but joy.

Clint doesn’t think this situation is going to turn out nearly so well. But he keeps trying, keeps doing his best to make Phil safe and comfortable out here in the middle of nowhere. Because it hurts to see Phil hurt, to hold Phil’s hands so that he doesn’t scratch more gouges into his skin - “Spiders, get them off, get them off me!” - to feel the hammering of his pulse, the heat of his fever, and know that it won’t help. That Phil’s mind is somewhere else, and isn’t aware of Clint’s careful ministrations, isn’t comforted.

Clint wonders at Phil’s last mission, the one he couldn’t tell them anything about. What the hell was he doing for four months? And why wasn’t someone - another agent, or Fury - aware of what was going on? Why didn’t they _do_ anything?

Why didn’t Phil tell _him_?

The temperature drops that night - their fifth night since they jumped out of the frying pan and into the fire. Clint props himself against a tree and settles Phil between his legs, Phil’s back to Clint’s chest, with the parachute tucked around both of them. Clint wraps his arms around him, holds tight to Phil’s wrists, and tries to doze.

Phil seizes more during the night. Clint loses count of how many times it happens, just holds on and waits it out every time. Sometimes, he can manage to keep Phil in his arms; sometimes, not.

*

Tuesday, June 8, 2004

*

The sixth day dawns damp and grey, and Phil’s skin is clammy and pale. He’s stopped struggling against Clint’s arms, stopped staring around the woods in fright, stopped screaming for Natasha, for Clint, for his mother. His eyes are half-lidded, but he doesn’t respond when Clint calls his name. His hands still tremble. Clint puts his aids back in. He doesn’t want to miss anything.

When the quinjet flies overhead, just above the canopy, Clint’s overwhelming relief is cut off by Phil’s flinch of surprise, and then he’s seizing again. Distantly, Clint hears the jet land, but he’s too busy trying to hold Phil in a safe position to do anything else. Then there is someone - several someones - next to him, and Clint turns to see Meredith beside him.

“He’s been seizing since yesterday,” Clint says, watching Phil shake. “He keeps throwing up what I feed him.”

“Small wonder, Clint, you suck at cooking,” Meredith replies. “You should have ordered take-out.”

Clint snorts. The seizure slows, and then stops, and the other two agents - medics, Clint realizes - load Phil onto an emergency backboard and carry him off. Clint goes to stand and follow, only to find himself listing into Meredith’s side. “Hey,” she says, pulling his arm over her shoulder and helping him stand. “Don’t get fresh with me, you smell almost as bad as your cooking. When did you last eat?”

“What day is it?” Clint responds as they stagger forward. Meredith is a few inches too short to act as a crutch for him, but what she lacks in stature, she makes up for in strength. It feels like her hand on his hip is carrying half his weight. And it might be.

“And that answers that question. Have I mentioned how much you smell? I mean, I know I’m stuck in your armpit so I’m getting it full-blast, but wow, maybe you need to think about reducing the amount of asparagus in your diet, Clint.”

Meredith keeps up the patter until they get on board the quinjet. Phil is there, still on the backboard, which is now strapped down on the bench seats. Clint staggers over to look at him. There’s an IV in his arm, and it looks like the trembling has finally - finally - stopped. Clint reaches out to feel the pulse in his neck. It’s slower than it’s been in days, and unsteady. Phil’s breathing is just as poor.

“Strap in,” one of the other agents says. “Time to go!”

Clint obeys, sliding in next to Meredith and curling against her side. Her arm goes around his waist just as the jet takes off, and he drops his head onto her shoulder.

Once they’re at cruising altitude, one of the medics goes to work on Phil, stripping off his soiled clothes and covering him with a clean blanket. The other medic crouches down next to him and Meredith.

“Hey, Agent Barton,” she says gently, as if talking to a trauma victim. Maybe she is. “I’m Agent Vasquez. I’m a medic. Mind if I take a look at you?”

Clint nods, and doesn’t take his eyes off Phil until Vasquez gives him an injection, and consciousness falls away.

Clint wakes up when the jet lands. Doctors in blue scrubs show up with a gurney and wheel Phil away. Clint watches them go in a daze. Then there’s another gurney in front of him, and Meredith is patting it with a beckoning look on her face. Clint grabs his IV bag from the hook over his seat, hands it to Meredith and lies down, and then he’s out again.

*

Wednesday, June 9, 2004

*

The worst part of waking up in any type of hospital is realizing that someone has undressed you, washed every inch of you, and dressed you again, all without you noticing. Most of the time, you don’t ever find out who did it.

With that thought, Clint finishes swimming all the way to consciousness and looks around. The privacy curtain is pulled all the way around his bed, and the case for his hearing aids is on the side table. He sits up and puts them in. Rather than hit the call button for the nurse, he swings his legs around the side of the bed, gets to his feet, and wheels his IV stand along as he steps up to the curtain and pulls it back.

Natasha is in the next bed, reading a book. She sets it down in her lap and smiles weakly at him.

He shuffles over to her, slowly. His legs feel like jelly and his stomach is a tight pit of pain. He sits down in the chair next to her bed and takes the hand that she offers, lifting it to his cheek. “How you doing, kid?”

She smiles, a little bit wry, a little bit proud, a little bit sad. “I ran two marathons in two days,” she says, trailing her hand into his hair. She combs it a little bit, the spot where sometimes his aids make the hair stick out weirdly.

“Thanks,” Clint says. He doesn’t specify what for.

“Phil’s in the ICU,” she says after a few moments, and Clint stiffens.

“Did you know?” he asks, even as she’s shaking her head.

“No. Did you?”

He swallows down all the emotions vying for his attention: fear for Phil’s health, anger at Phil’s deception, disappointment at Phil’s dishonesty, and an overwhelming guilt for his own inability to see that there was something wrong, that Phil had a problem, a secret so big it nearly killed him. “No. I didn’t.”

*

Thursday, June 10, 2004

*

After days of looking after Phil, barely eating, Clint expected to gorge himself on something large and delicious. Instead, he manages a fruit cup. An hour later, some saltines and ginger ale. Then a mug of chicken broth after that, and then he’s passing back out and waking up another 14 hours later.

When he manages a whole grilled cheese sandwich on his own, he showers, puts on a fresh t-shirt and trackpants, and heads over to the ICU.

Phil looks… better. He’s definitely cleaner. There’s no ventilator, just a nasal cannula, and the sensors for the heart monitor are hidden underneath the hospital gown. The IV is taped securely to his wrist - keeping it in place in case of another seizure, Clint supposes.

But still, his eyes are sunken with dark shadows, and there are long scratches all over the skin of his face and neck, where he’d attacked himself with his nails. The rest of his skin is loose, and pale, and Clint stares at him for long seconds.

The past few days have pulled his emotions in a thousand different directions. Worry, followed closely by abject terror. Concern followed by desperation.

And the dawning realization that even though he loves Phil, loves him down to his very core, he might not really know him at all.

Phil hid this.

He reaches out and brushes his fingers across Phil’s forehead - no more fever - and Phil opens his eyes.

“Hey,” Phil says, groggily, reaching for the bed controls.

Clint closes his eyes, and sees Phil shaking in the night.

“Hey? What’s wrong?”

“How could you do that?” Clint asks. He opens his eyes to stare down into Phil’s. “How could you do that to us?”

Phil blinks in surprise. Clint is surprised, too, that anger is the emotion that’s decided to come out to play. “You had to know. You had to know that if something happened, if we got cut off from resources, you had to know that this would happen.”

Phil shakes his head. “I didn’t...”

“Didn’t what?” Clint snaps.

“I didn’t know that would happen,” Phil replies, voice tight. He pauses, glances away. “I didn’t think it had gotten that bad.”

“You didn’t think it had gotten that bad.” Clint raises his hands in a shrug and brings them down to grab the bedrail. “Well obviously you were wrong, because we were out there in the woods and Nat nearly killed herself getting help and you-- you nearly--”

“Clint--”

Clint turns away from Phil’s entreating look. “Come on, Phil. How long has this been going on? How long have you - have you been hiding this from us? Me and Nat, we’d do anything for you, you know that, you got to know--”

“You didn’t need to know!” Phil snaps, making Clint turn. His hands are clenched in the bedsheets. “I was handling it!”

Clint throws his arms wide, gesturing to the ICU as a whole. “You call this handling it?”

“I didn’t think it had gotten that bad, and obviously that was a mistake in judgment, but that really has nothing to do with you.”

Clint leans forward. “You could have told me what was going on.”

“What was going on was none of your fucking business!” Phil shouts, and Clint’s heart jumps in his throat as he takes two steps backward instinctively. “I don’t have to tell you shit!”

Maybe he took two steps back, but he doesn’t back down, not this time. “You do when it’s shit that could get us all killed! You do when it’s shit that could kill you! We would have helped you, we would have understood--”

Phil scowls. “Would you? Would you really?”

“Yes! If you’d just open your mouth and say--”

“And say something?” Phil asks. Clint’s never heard him talk like this to anyone. “I think you’re the last person who could talk about the benefits of opening up, Barton, considering it took you ten years in SHIELD to tell one single person about the most defining moment of your life, and you ended up telling it to the KGB spy.”

Clint’s mouth snaps shut at that. He stares at Phil for a moment, and then says, voice low, “Don’t talk about Nat like that.”

Phil shakes his head and rubs his eyes with the hand not impeded by the IV. “You don’t get it. You don’t get it, and I’m not talking about this with you.”

“What the hell, Phil? I thought you were going to die in my arms three days ago, and all you can do now is sit here and trash Natasha and act like I’m too stupid to understand--”

“You’re not--”

Clint laughs harshly. So this is it. This is everything. “No, it’s not that I’m too stupid. It’s that you don’t trust me, you couldn’t trust me enough to-- and then you go and pull this shit ‘cause you’d rather die than trust me-- and you were, you were screaming for your mom-- you were shaking so hard--”

Phil looks destroyed, at that, and Clint’s voice breaks. He runs both fists through his hair as he backs away from the side of the bed. “Fuck it, fuck this. If that’s the way you want to play it, fine. Don’t tell me.”

Phil says nothing, and Clint spins on his heel and heads out the door.

*

He doesn’t go back to the ward where Natasha waits, and he certainly can’t hang around the ICU. He stalks down the halls, shoulders tense and hands shoved into his pockets, until he gets to Meredith’s door in the barracks. He pounds on it until it opens.

Meredith’s hair is in disarray, and she’s wearing a camisole and sleep shorts. Clint asks, “Are you busy?”

Meredith raises a single eyebrow. “Yes.”

“You wanna fuck?” He hadn’t planned on that being his question, but that’s what comes out.

Meredith’s expression doesn’t change. “Yes.”

He surges forward. By the time the door slams behind him, his teeth are on her neck and his hands are underneath her shirt. By the time he pushes her backward onto the bed, both of their shirts are gone. He sucks hickies into her neck, pulls her nipples into his mouth and sucks, laves the undersides of her breasts with his tongue and digs his fingers into the soft skin of her hips. His feet are still planted on the floor, but she’s got both legs wrapped around him and is grinding onto his cock. He needs - he needs it - he needs NOW--

He pulls back and takes her shorts and underwear with him, yanking them down her legs and off her feet. He sends them flying over his shoulder as Meredith grabs the waistband of his sweatpants. Instead of pulling them down, like he expected, she uses the grip to pull him forward and to the side, so that he’s falling onto the bed and then rolling under her as she straddles him.

“Hi!” she says, brightly, flipping her blonde hair over her shoulder like every porno Clint’s ever watched.

“Meredith,” he groans, bucking his hips.

She laughs, and then smiles down at him. “You’re angry about something, so you want a quick, hard fuck?”

“Yes,” he says. He lifts his hips again, and she uses the motion to finally pull his pants and boxers off. She straddles him again, her pelvis seated just behind where his cock is bobbing, red and ready. “Fuck me.”

“What are you angry about?” she asks instead, drawing her hand gently up the length of his cock.

“You’re not fucking me,” he replies, his hands fisting into the pillow behind his head.

“I’m usually not fucking you, that’s no reason to be angry,” she says. She does the thing with her hand again and continues, “What are you really angry about?”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Clint says. “I came here to forget about--” he gasps as she cups his balls and squeezes. “--to forget about it.”

Her fingers start to trace up and down his cock, down to his balls and then back - feather-light, teasing. “You’re usually not angry about stuff, though. Sullen, yes. Resentful, yes. Depressed, constantly. But not usually angry. At least not when Rosita’s not in the room.”

“Can we _not_ talk about Rosita? Or anything? Can’t we just--” She flicks the head of his cock with her nail. It should not feel good. It should definitely not feel-- “Fuck!”

“Sure we will. We will definitely do that. Scout’s honor. But first,” she pauses, and he looks up to see her lick her palm, and then he follows her hand down to where it finally, finally wraps fully around his cock. She strokes his length once, twice, and then says, “Is it Phil you’re angry at?”

“Meredi--” She squeezes and strokes him again. “God, I hate you so much right now. So, so much. Oh my god.”

“You’re the one who came into my room and demanded sex. You never specified how you wanted it. Is it Phil you’re angry at?”

He bites his lip. She stops stroking, and he groans. “Yes, fine, yes.”

She rewards him with another squeeze of his balls that makes him arch his back and thrust his hips up into nothing. “Why are you angry with him?”

“Why do you care?” he demands, opening his eyes to glare up at her. “Why are you even doing this?”

Meredith lets go of his cock and leans forward, resting her hands on his wrists. Her breasts hang level with his eyes, and his cock just brushes the soft skin of her stomach. He shoves his hips up, trying to get more friction, and cranes his neck to reach for a red nipple. She pins him more heavily with her hands, and holds his hips down with her thighs. It’s hot as hell, and almost makes him forget his question, until she says, “‘Cause you’re my friend. You’re both my friends. And you just went through something horrible together, so you should really be, like, cuddling, not fighting.”

Clint thrusts again, and still only manages the barest contact with her belly. “Noooo,” he whines. “Please just fuck me.”

“Why are you mad at him?”

“He endangered the mission,” Clint pants.

She shrugs. “Yes, but that’s not why you’re mad.”

“He was irresponsible.”

She raises her eyebrows in disbelief. “Please.”

“He…” Clint takes a deep breath. “He lied to me.”

“Closer, but still no,” Meredith slides her hips forward, and Clint can feel-- can feel her--

“He didn’t trust me.”

She does it again, pressing down so that the head of his cock slips into her vulva, rubs at her wet entrance, so close, almost inside, all it would take, if he could just-- _push_ \-- “And what does it mean that he didn’t trust you?”

The pure frustration overwhelms him, and the dam inside him bursts.“He didn’t trust me, I wasn’t good enough, he could have died because he didn’t trust me enough and now he’s gonna leave and, and it’s all my--”

Meredith slams down on him, surrounding him with tight, wet heat, and between the tangled feelings in his chest and the intensity of finally being inside of her, he has no choice but to burst into tears.

“Condom!” he gasps, staring up at her in panic, because no matter how old he gets, apparently he is still stupid about sex.

Meredith shoots him a disdainful look. “Gimme a break,” she says, dryly, raising her hips slightly. He looks down to see that somehow, in the midst of interrogating him and driving him insane, she slipped a condom on his cock without him ever noticing.

He lets out a sob. Meredith leans forward to hold him, and rides him slowly, gently, as he cries softly into her neck. As they rock together, the knot in Clint’s chest loosens, and he wraps his arms around her to hold her close. She’s safe and familiar and love, and after the week he’s had and the fear he’s felt… he is so, overwhelmingly grateful that she was there to rescue him.

Minutes pass, and his tears dry and his breathing evens out. Meredith lifts her head and kisses his mouth, a gentle caress that goes deeper and deeper, until she pulls away to gasp in air.

For once, her own walls are down - gone is the sarcasm and snark she wears sometimes like a favorite sequined dress she wants to show off, other times like steel chainmail nothing can get past.

The angle seems to work best for her when she’s leaning further forward, he notices in the back of his mind, so he pulls her back down to nuzzle and nibble on her neck and ears. He rocks his hips harder when she starts making faint, high-pitched sounds. A trembling in the muscles of her thighs lets him know she’s about to come, and he grips her hips and grinds hard against her until her walls tighten around him and she shudders.

She laughs as she comes, and kisses his cheek as he comes back down from his own orgasm, immediately following hers.

“Aaron totally owes me ten bucks,” she says, panting. “I told him after our first class together that I’d nail you.”

“It only took you fourteen years,” Clint mumbles into her neck.

“Worth it,” Meredith says, rising up off of his softening cock, leaving the condom where it is. She flops down next to him gracelessly and stretches, bumping his nose with her elbow. “Feel better?”

He wipes his face with his hand. “No.”

“Gonna go talk to Phil?”

He sighs, and looks at the clock. It’s just past eleven. “I’ll do it tomorrow. Can I crash here?”

“Yeah. We need to figure out who’s going to tell Rosita about this.”

Clint groans, and buries his head under Meredith’s pillow. “Not it.”

*

Friday, June 11, 2004

*

When Clint gets to the ICU the next morning, Phil’s bed is empty, and Clint’s heart is in his throat until the nurse tells him Phil was transferred to a long-term recovery facility.

*

Saturday, June 12, 2004

*

“Oh my god,” Rosita says over the video conference call Meredith set up on the monitor in her room. “You horndogs, find a better way to deal with your emotions than just fucking them out.”

“At least we deal with our emotions,” Meredith says archly.

Lraaz cuts in, “So what were the emotions the two of you were… dealing with?”

Clint glances at Meredith and hesitates. She, of course, sees his hesitation and runs with it. “The boy that Clint likes lied to everyone about a health issue that endangered a mission, so Clint thinks it’s all his fault.”

Multiple groans echo through the speakers, Rosita’s the loudest. “Clint. What have we told you about taking things personally?”

Lraaz adds, “What happened has nothing to do with you.”

“You guys don’t even know what happened--”

“We don’t need to,” Rosita says. “It’s always the same story -- something bad happens, it’s all your fault, everything’s ruined forever.”

“Thanks for your honesty, Rosita,” Meredith says, rolling her eyes.

“There is a pattern here,  yes,” Lraaz says, shooting Rosita a quelling look. “Clint. We have been your friends for how long?”

“Fourteen years,” he admits. It doesn’t feel like that long. It feels like forever.

Lraaz is nodding. “For fourteen years, we have been friends. Do you trust that we’re going to remain your friends?”

“Yeah,” Clint answers, honestly, because he thinks he finally does.

“And Natasha, she is your friend now, also?”

“Yeah,” he admits. Friend, sister, daughter? Natasha fits somewhere in the spaces between.

“And Phil?”

Beside him, Meredith coughs loudly and makes chopping gestures with her hands, because Meredith has never been subtle in her entire life.

“Ah,” Lraaz says.

“Huh,” Rosita says.

The two of them seem to share a long look with Meredith. Clint can’t figure out how the exclusive communication works over teleconference, but somehow they manage it.

“Yup,” Meredith replies, nodding once.

Lraaz and Rosita both sigh.

“Just because something happens to you, doesn’t mean it’s your fault,” Lraaz says, gently. “If Phil lied, that’s his fault. If his lie hurt you, that’s his fault.”

“I’m worried about him,” Clint admits.

“You’re allowed to feel hurt and worried at the same time.”

“But I yelled at him, and he left,” Clint adds. Maybe Phil would have stayed - even explained, eventually - if Clint hadn’t lashed out in anger and fear and overall emotional exhaustion.

“Clint, by my estimation, you and I have gotten into eight screaming fights in the past fourteen years, but we’re still friends,” Rosita says. “If he dumps you because you yelled at him once when it was his fault, then good riddance.”

Clint shrugs, and Meredith pats him on the shoulder.

*

Friday, June 18, 2004

*

Clint and Natasha are sent home and put on two weeks’ medical leave, with their return to active duty predicated on regaining the weight they lost and their kidneys returning to normal function. No one tells them where Phil is, and the empty spot on the couch - already too empty, too often these past several months - is jarring. A week into their leave, Clint makes a trip to Target and buys a half-dozen mismatched throw pillows to fill the spaces.

“Happy birthday to me,” he mumbles to himself as he rearranges the tableau. Nothing looks right.

The overhead light flashes, and Clint jumps and spins around, half-expecting Phil to be standing in the doorway, popcorn in his hands and that small smile on his face. He sags in disappointment, and Nick Fury asks, “Expecting someone else?”

“No,” Clint says, turning away again. “What are you doing here?”

“It’s your birthday,” Nick says. “Doesn’t that mean movie night?”

Clint’s eyebrows shoot up, and he turns to stare at Nick. “You. Are the Director of SHIELD. Don’t you have something more important to do than watch movies in Boyle Heights?”

“No,” Nick says, and leaves it at that. He pulls a small wrapped box, about the size of a DVD case, out of his jacket pocket and places it on the coffee table.

Clint stares down at it. It’s not the first gift Nick has given him - his years at SHIELD Academy were filled with random care package from classified locales, gifts that he never asked for and never expected.

He does want to ask for one thing. An answer. “How’s Phil?”

Nick sighs and removes his jacket. He tosses it over the back of the sectional and sits down. “Figured it would take you a little longer to ask, and I’d have some time to think of the right reply.”

“You’re deflecting,” Clint says flatly.

“I know I am. It’s an awkward situation, Clint.”

Clint sighs, and sits down next to Nick, leaning his head back against the cushion. “I know. I just…” He turns to look at Nick. “Is he okay?”

“He’s going to be,” Nick assures him, nothing but sincerity in his voice. “Officially, he’s undercover on a classified mission. Unofficially, he’s at a rehab center out of state.”

Hope flares in his chest. “So he’s going to be okay?”

“If he stays with the program, yes, eventually he’ll be okay. No long-term effects.”

Clint chews on this for a minute, thinks about root causes and triggers and relapses. Finally, he asks, “The secret mission he was on before this, what happened?”

Nick blinks. “He told you he was on a secret mission?”

“Yeah,” Clint answers, anxiety growing in his gut. If Nick doesn’t know... “He was running out of town every other weekend for a while there.”

And that’s when Nick groans, covers his face with hand, and mutters what sounds like, “Dammit, Coulson.”

Clint is starting to think that whatever was going on between February and June, it wasn’t any sort of eyes-only, top-secret mission to parts unknown. “Where was he?”

Nick drops his hand and gives Clint a look. “I can’t give you any details other than that it was personal, and he was not dealing with it nearly as well as he led me to believe. The man is an emotional dumpster fire on his best day, and this was not his best day.”

Personal? The only thing in Phil’s life that isn’t surrounded on all four sides by SHIELD is the classic car in his storage unit and his mother up in Wisconsin, and Phil just saw both of them at Christmas. Clint opens his mouth to ask more, but Nick waves his hand to cut him off. “The rest you can discuss with him when he gets back. I’m not stepping a toe in between the two of you.”

Before Clint can ask what the hell _that_ means, the buzzer at the door goes off. “That will be the rest of your guests,” Nick says, standing to head to the door. He leads Natasha and her friend Maria into the living room and continues, “Now, let’s start your party. Open your damn present.”

The gift is the dual DVD set of _Jurassic Park_ and _The Lost World_ , which the four of them then proceed to watch together over bad Chinese delivery from around the corner and Jones sodas. Clint’s not in the mood for beer, lately.

Natasha’s friend Maria has dark hair pulled back tightly, and between that and her expression, Clint reads her as having a severe, dour disposition. Then she opens her mouth, and Clint realizes she’s as much of a giant nerd as Natasha is and the two of them are obviously soulmates. “Isn’t that the guy from Seinfeld?” she asks a few minutes into the movie.

“No, that’s your mom,” Natasha snarks.

“No, that’s _your_ mom,” Nick replies, to Clint’s complete shock.

It’s his birthday, and his best friend hates him, so he lets himself mutter, “When the hell did the three of you get so close?”

“While you were off mooning over Coulson,” Maria shoots back.

Clint flushes and looks away. Someone throws a handful of popcorn at his face. A dinosaur roars on-screen, and Nick says, “What? No, of course they kill off the black guy, of course. If I ever make a movie, I’m going to pretend to kill off the black guy and then at the end he’s going to burst in and save the day, just watch.”

“Okay, Nick,” Natasha says in a long-suffering tone. She throws another popcorn kernel at Clint. He catches it and throws it back. She does it three more times, until he gives up and just tackles her, knocking the empty bowl to the floor and making her laugh out loud.

*

Friday, September 17, 2004

*

Clint and Natasha have been running missions with Agent Hand again - short, sneaky two-person operations where they have to figure out their own plan for getting in and out. It’s weird being just the two of them, with Hand safely supervising from afar. It’s the hardest work he’s ever done, but with Natasha as his partner, he feels like he can handle it.

A day after they return from one of those kinds of missions, Clint comes back from a meeting on base to find Natasha in his living room. She’s sitting in her spot on the couch and tapping a folded up piece of paper on her leg where it’s crossed over her knee.

“Hey, kid, what’s up?” Clint asks as he sets his bag on the table next to the door. Natasha looks up at him and frowns, but says nothing.

He mirrors her expression. “Why the frown?”

“I did something, and I’m afraid I may have overstepped some boundaries,” she responds.

Clint wanders around the room, casually putting the items in his bag back in their appropriate places. He knows Natasha prefers not to be under the microscope when she’s answering questions. “Are you in trouble?”

“Official trouble?” She shakes her head. “No.”

Like _that_ means anything at SHIELD. “Unofficial trouble?”

She glances at him from beneath her eyelashes, hesitant and unsure in a way he hasn’t seen in months. “That depends on your reaction.”

“You did something, and you think I’m going to be mad at you?” That’s new.

“Yes. Maybe.”

“Okay… So tell me what you did and I’ll tell you if I’m mad at you. Did you break my extra pair of hearing aids?”

“No.”

“Did you set something I own on fire?”

“No.”

“Did you dye all of my socks pink?”

Her lips twitch. “No.”

“Did you—“

“I found Jackie.”

Clint jerks back, surprised.” You… what?”

Natasha unfolds the paper in her hand and passes it to him. It’s a printout of an Illinois driver’s license, Jackie’s face – sixteen years older – stares out at him. The name on the license is Teresa Jacqueline Braugher. Not Jacqueline Higgins. Explains why he couldn’t find her. The address is a suburb of Chicago. Clint sits down heavily on the bed next to Natasha.

“I know you go looking every once in awhile, but you hadn’t found her. I thought I might have better luck.”

Clint stares down at the photo in his hand and says nothing.

“Should I have left it alone?”

“You found her,” Clint says blankly.

“Yeah. I thought maybe, if you found her, you might feel better. Be able to move on.”

Clint knows that’s something he should pay attention to, be suspicious about, but, “You found her?”

“Yes,” Natasha says. “Is that okay?”

“She… she thinks I’m dead.”

“I know.”

“I think…” He can’t tear his eyes away from the photo. “I think I need some space right now.”

Natasha’s shoulders slump, just slightly. “You’re angry.”

“I’m not angry.” He doesn’t know what he is.

“Okay,” she says, clearly not believing him.

Clint met Jackie when he was twelve years old, and Clint lost her when he was seventeen. Now he’s just turned thirty-three, and Jackie has spent sixteen years thinking he’s dead.

He’d searched for her. All the time, at first. Then, just around the time when Bailey’s birthday was coming up, or had just passed. The time of year when, for a few weeks, everything in the world seemed a little dimmer. He’d just about given up hope of actually finding her. He doesn’t know why he’s kept searching.

It’s been sixteen years, and Jackie’s moved on. How could he even think about crashing back into her life?

*

Sunday, September 19, 2004

*

Clint stares at the front door and thinks this is a terrible idea. He should have called first, sent an email, sent a fucking… a telegram, instead of flying out to Chicago on his weekend off and renting a car to drive to Jackie’s house and show up at her front door.

He takes a deep breath and knocks. The door immediately opens. “Was wondering when you were going to finally make a decision,” Jackie snarks, and suddenly Clint is seventeen again and staring at the most beautiful girl in the world.

She’s older now, of course. Thirty-two, not sixteen. The extra weight she’d gained during her pregnancy has gone, leaving behind deeper curves than he’s used to. Whereas she’d kept her hair short and natural as a teenager, now it’s set in a modern style, done up in a hundred tiny braids and pulled back into a ponytail at the base of her neck.

While he drinks her in, she stares back at him blankly and says, “Can I help you?”

“This was a bad idea,” Clint says without meaning to. She doesn’t recognize him. He tells himself it’s because of the sunglasses.

Jackie’s eyebrow rises. “You’re the one who knocked on my door.”

“Yeah, I, um…”

“Who’s that?” A little girl, maybe four years old and the spitting image of Jackie, comes up next to her in the doorway and tugs on the hem of her shirt. Jackie reaches down to scoop her up and settle her on her hip. “Who’s he? Who are you?”

Clint knows he’s staring like a weirdo, but the sight of Jackie and her daughter is tangling up his mind and his insights even more than before. “I’m…” he stutters, backing away off the porch. “I’m, I can’t, I’m sorry—“

He jogs down the steps and starts striding down the sidewalk without looking anywhere but the cement beneath his feet. He gets to his rental car, climbs in, and leans forward to rest his head against the steering wheel. He knocks his forehead against it a couple of times and sighs, “Fuck.”

“You don’t look like you’re selling something,” Jackie says through the passenger side window. He jumps. “And missionaries always come around in pairs. You bringing me bad news, white boy?”

Clint snorts humorlessly. Typical Jackie. “I got news, yeah. Don’t know if it’s bad or not.”

“You wanna come up on the porch and tell me about it?”

He glances over at her. She’s wearing her “you must obey me” face. “How do you know I’m not some weirdo?”

“In this car?” She asks wryly. “I think you’re safe to come up on the porch, at least.”

He gets out of the car again and silently follows her back to the house. She parks him in a wicker chair and sits down across from him.

“Well?” she asks, after he’s spent a few more awkward seconds just looking at her. “What’s you’re maybe-bad-maybe-not news?”

“I didn’t think this would be so hard,” he replies.

“You could always start by telling me your name.”

He huffs. Here it goes. “Clint Barton.”

Her whole body stills as she stares at him. Her face turns ashen even as she says, “What?”

He takes off his aviators, finally, and her eyes grow wide. Her mouth drops open and her hand rises slowly to cover it. “Clint?”

He nods. “Yeah. It’s me.”

She moves just as fast as he remembers, punching him in the arm. “Clinton Francis Barton, where the _hell_ have you been?”

It’s the same exact spot that she punched at least once a week, if not more, while they were growing up. He rubs it, more out of long-held habit than because it actually hurts. “Jesus, Jackie!”

“Explain,” she orders, sitting back down. The absolute shock in her face is ebbing, and she’s back to being, what Barney used to call, Bossy Jackie. “Explain now.”

“I—“

“Because you see,” she interrupts, “it was my understanding that Trickshot killed you, that’s what your useless brother told everyone to get us to leave Akron in the middle of the damn night.”

“Yeah—“

“So now you’re here – not dead – so, what? You decided back then that it was too much for you? Ran off and told your brother to lie for you so that no one would go looking?”

“No!”

“And so you’re back here now, why? Because you feel guilty? Because you want something? Because you suddenly remembered you’re a father and you think you have the right? You just walk in here, after _years_ , expecting to have everything back the way it was. Of course! Well you’re sixteen years too late, Clint, because your son isn’t here—“

“My son--” Son. He has a son. That shouldn’t hurt so much to know, but--

“I had to give him up, Clint, I had to _give him up_ , because I was sixteen and I couldn’t exactly see how it was possible for me to do anything else, because _I thought you were dead!_ ”

“It wasn’t a lie!” He objects, still reeling. “Barney told you I was dead because he thought I _was_ dead.”

“So you lied to him, too? What a piece of—“

“I didn’t lie _at all_! Jesus, Jackie, do you really think I would do something like that?”

“I don’t know what to think, because the Clint I knew wouldn’t have run off and left us with some bullshit story about a shooting—“

Clint reaches down to the hem of his t-shirt and lifts it up just high enough to reveal the while puckered scar from where Trick shot him and ruined his life. He doesn’t look at Jackie as she goes silent, turns his head to stare out across the street and watch the neighbor weed his front lawn. The man has a large hoe within easy reach, and he’s watching them out of the corner of his eye. Clint’s glad to know he’s there.

He feels Jackie’s hand touch his skin below the scar, feels her fingers trail up and around where the hole in his body used to be. There have been other scars made since then, more bullet holes, even. But this was the first.

“You could have gotten this any time,” Jackie says, removing her hand.

“When did you get so damn suspicious?” His eyes burn and he can feel the wetness on his cheeks where they’ve spilled over. He lowers his shirt again.

“What happened?” she asks, voice calmer now, like she might give him a chance to tell his side of the story, like she might be ready to believe him.

He keeps his face turned away. “Trick shot me. Threw me down some stairs. Don’t know how I made it, I shouldn’t have, makes sense Barney thought that I didn’t. Woke up in the hospital a couple weeks later, couldn’t move, couldn’t hear.” He reaches up to touch the hearing aids tucked behind his ears. He’d opted for the small, flesh-toned ones for this trip. Wasn’t in the mood to get stared at.

“By the time I got a message to Carson’s,” he continues, “you were gone, and Barney left me there at the hospital, and they put me back in the system.”

“That little asshole,” Jackie mutters under her breath.

Clint lifts one shoulder in a half-hearted shrug. “He did what he thought was best, I guess. I was so messed up. Casts and pins and stitches. He wouldn’t have been able to take care of me.”

They both lapse into silence at that point. Clint reaches up to scrub at his face with his sleeve. Finally, he says, “Barney’d told me you gave him up. Tried to find you both, anyway, as soon as I could. Even asked CPS. Kept at it for years. I thought about you all the time, dreamt that I could find you both and be a family. Gave that up, after a while. Still thought about you. Then Natasha went and found you for me.”

Jackie raises an eyebrow and says, “Natasha’s your… wife?”

“No,” he laughs wetly. “Teenager I’ve been looking after. Whiz at computers. She found you and I knew it was a bad idea, but. I wanted to see you, see if you guys were… were okay.”

“You know you can’t waltz in here and expect everything to go back to how it was,” she says warningly, and he nods. “Bailey’s long gone. I’m married now. I got two kids and a mortgage. I’m not running away with you, if that’s what you’re after.”

Clint looks down at the faded wood of the porch floor and shakes his head slowly. “It’s not. I swear, it’s not. It’s just… I wanted… closure, I guess.”

“You gonna go looking for Bailey, next?” she asks, frowning. He shrugs again, and feels her kick his shin, another echo of times past. She’d always hated when he was quiet. “You gonna throw his life into upheaval like you’re doing to mine?”

“I didn’t mean to—“

“Doesn’t matter. I’m glad you’re not dead, I’m ecstatic, I really am, but you shouldn’t’ve come here. Find your closure somewhere else, don’t do this to him, too.”

Clint looks down at his hands, clasped tightly in his lap, and nods. He doesn’t know what he expected. Not this.

But he guesses he should have.

He stands. He needs to leave now, before he just… “For what it’s worth, I am sorry. For this.”

“I’m sorry you got shot,” Jackie replies.

“I work for the government, now. I get shot at all the time.”

Turning, he walks down the steps. When his feet hit pavement, he hears, “Clint.”

“Yeah?” he asks, pausing, waiting. Even now, he obeys her.

“I put your name on the paperwork. I don’t know why, but I did. When he turns eighteen he’ll be able to find you, if he wants to. But you need to leave that choice to him.”

“I will,” he promises.

“Clint.”

“I always did what you told me, Jack. I’m not going to stop now.”

He walks away without saying goodbye.

*

When he gets back to O’Hare and lets himself into his hotel room, he’s really not surprised to see Donna sitting on his bed, leaning against the headboard, with an open book in her hands. She works out of the Chicago field office. He hadn’t told her – or anyone, really – that he was coming, but there isn’t really anything a SHIELD agent can do to surprise him anymore.

“Good visit?” she asks, setting the book down on the nightstand.

He shakes his head. She scoots over to the far side of the bed and pats the spot on the mattress next to her. He sits, drops his head onto her shoulder, and cries.

*

Monday, September 20, 2004

*

Clint’s early flight arrives back in LA at noon, so that he can go straight to the base and work the rest of the afternoon. He makes it to the base, sticks his gear under his desk, turns on the computer, and just… stares at the screen until six, when Agent Jelimo passes by and asks him what he’s still doing here.

*

Tuesday, September 21, 2004

*

Clint’s large, stupidly obnoxious alarm buzzes him awake at 6:15. He slams the snooze button twice before grabbing the clock, ripping the four D batteries out of the back, chucking them at the wall, and dropping the clock on the floor next to his bed.

He gets up. He wants to stay in bed. But he gets up, takes the bus across town, heads into base, and sits down at his desk.

He stares at the wall, misses lunch, drifts through two meetings, and leaves as soon as his last meeting ends at four.

*

Wednesday, September 22, 2004

*

Clint wakes up with his alarm. He loses time staring out the bus window and misses his stop. It takes him half an hour to trudge back to base.

He pecks at his keyboard all day, trying to catch up on work he knows he needs to get done before his next mission comes up. He stays until seven, then skips dinner and goes straight to bed.

*

Thursday, September 23, 2004

*

He oversleeps. He gets to the base at noon. Agent Jelimo asks him if he’s alright.

He shrugs.

*

Friday, September 24, 2004

*

Eight more hours, he tells himself when he gets to work on time at nine.

Five more hours, he tells himself as he picks at his lunch. He dumps most of it in the end.

Thirty more minutes, he tells himself as he gets on the bus back to his apartment on the edge of Boyle Heights.

Then he’s home, and in bed, and no one expects anything of him until Monday.

*

Monday, September 27, 2004

*

He calls in.

*

Tuesday, September 28, 2004

*

He calls in.

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Find me at [jhscdood.tumblr.com](http://jhscdood.tumblr.com)


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here it is.
> 
> Warnings for discussions of past abuse, including physical and sexual abuse of a minor, and brief mentions of suicide.
> 
> Many thanks to [Laura Kaye](http://archiveofourown.org/users/laurakaye/pseuds/Laura%20Kaye) for the fantastic beta. You can pretty much blame her for 50% of this chapter.

*

Wednesday, September 29, 2004

*

His phone buzzes him awake. He searches under the pillow for it, and flips it open to read a text message from Natasha. _Back from D.C. Brought bagels. Your desk is a disaster_.

He closes his phone and sticks it back under his pillow without answering. A few minutes later, another message comes in. _Are you coming to the meeting at 11?_

Another few minutes, and several more messages come in quick succession:

_Are you sick?_

_If you’re sick, you forgot to call in._

_Are you dead?_

_If you’re dead, you forgot to call in._

_Put in your aids and call me._

He opens up the back of the phone and pulls the battery out before she can take it upon herself to call him first. Then he rolls to face the wall, and drifts.

*

He wakes up to a touch on his shoulder, but he doesn’t turn. He doesn’t know who it is, doesn’t care. The hand shakes him slightly, and then a little harder, then pulls him to roll over onto his back, and he goes, because he can’t be bothered to fight. He cracks one eye open, and of course, it’s Natasha.

Always Natasha, always ready to pull him out of his dark hole.

He doesn’t want to come out. Doesn’t want to do anything. Mostly, he just wants to stay in bed.

Natasha picks up his hearing aid case from the nightstand and hands it to him, eyebrow raised expectantly. He glances at it, doesn’t take it, looks away.

She sits down on the bed next to him and nudges the case closer. He rolls back on his side, and this time, she lets him. After a few minutes, she gets up and leaves.

*

It’s the smell that draws him out, finally. Smoked paprika. Other spices as well, onion and garlic, but mainly paprika. He must be really out of it if Natasha is making cabbage soup before November.

He puts in his hearing aids, hits the bathroom, and shuffles into the kitchen. Natasha is sitting at his kitchen table, reading his junk mail. “Are your aids in?” she asks, when he sits across from her and stares down at the stained wood.

“Yeah,” he says, after a long moment.

There’s a long pause, and he glances up to find her staring at him intently. But then, all she says is, “Soup’s ready,” and stands to serve him a bowl.

He eats the food mechanically. He knows, intellectually, that it’s good, and that Natasha is an expert in all foods paprika-based. He dips bread into the broth and tries to remember the last thing he ate. Maybe dry cereal. He’s not sure when he last went grocery shopping. Not since before he went to Chicago--

He puts down the spoon and pushes the bowl away, still half-full. He stands, and goes to head back to bed, but Natasha corrals him and suddenly he finds himself sitting on his couch instead, wrapped in a blanket and a nineteen-year-old. Nineteen. Only three years older than his son. If the world were different, they would know each other, they could be friends, they could hate each other, they could love each other like siblings or like something else, but they wouldn’t be separated, they wouldn’t spend their whole lives not ever meeting--

Clint realizes he’s crying, and Natasha has that look on her face that means she’s panicking but trying hard not to show it. Usually when she gets that look, Phil sees it before anyone else, and Phil’s there to draw her out and make her okay again. But Phil’s not here, either, and that’s another person Natasha can’t rely on now, that Clint can’t rely on now.

Bailey. Phil. Jackie. Barney. All the people whose lives he isn’t a part of anymore.

Natasha thrusts a roll of toilet paper in his face. He doesn’t think he’s ever owned a box of tissues in his life; he pulls off a length, wads it up and blows his nose.

“I’m sorry,” Natasha says.

“What’re _you_ sorry for?” He asks roughly. “I’m the one who’s a basket case.”

“I didn’t realize what would happen with Jackie,” she admits, and he tenses. She hurries to continue, “I thought it might make you happy. You could see her and find Bailey and get closure. I thought it-- I thought, with what happened with Phil-- I thought it might help.”

Clint shrugs, and wipes his nose, and stares across the room blankly. He’s not angry at Natasha. He’s not… anything.

“Clint?”

He shrugs again. “It’s fine. It didn’t work. But I’m fine.”

She comes around to kneel in front of him, blocking his view of the wall, so that all he can see is her. His Natasha, who is so useless at other people’s feelings, but tries so hard anyway. “I’m fine,” he repeats.

She shakes her head. “I don’t think you are. Have you been like this since you got back?”

Another shrug.

She takes his hands and squeezes them, almost to the point of pain. “Clint, please look at me. You’re scaring me.”

He shakes his head lightly. “Nothing to be scared of, kiddo. Just tired. Be fine in a few days.”

“You’re having another depressive episode,” she says, tightly. “The last time you had one, Phil had you on unofficial suicide watch for weeks until you pulled out of it.”

Clint starts. He doesn’t know when that was. He knows he gets like this, sometimes. He doesn’t really keep track. He doesn’t remember ever being suicidal.

Natasha continues, “But Phil isn’t here to help me this time. I had to watch him fall apart without being able to do anything, and I can’t watch it happen to you, too. I need you to get some help, this time. Help that isn’t me.”

Clint focuses on Natasha, now. Nineteen years old. Help that isn’t her. Isn’t Phil.

His mind flashes back to what happened in June: Nat running marathons in the woods to save him and Phil, no matter the consequences. She was on aggressive fluid replacement for days afterward, and at high risk for rhabdo... rhabdo-something, something bad, that could have really hurt her if she’d had to run just a little bit longer, a little bit farther. And she would have, without a second thought.

Nat will turn herself inside out to help the people she loves, and Clint knows she’ll do it again right now if it’ll help him.

Part of him wants her to. Most of him wants her to, so he can go back to bed and not think about the world or his responsibilities or his failures. It’s not a good thought, not a fair thought, and it shocks him.  

He can’t put that on her. And that means he needs to get help. Real help, this time.

He lets go of her hand and picks up her phone from the side table, dials a number from memory. It rings twice, and then, “Fury.”

“Nick?” Clint rasps.

“Barton? What’s going on?”

He pauses, then quietly admits, “I need some help.”

“Are you secure?” Of course Nick thinks he’s in physical danger of some kind. When has he ever admitted to anything like this?

He takes a few short breaths. He didn’t-- it’s impossible, how hard this is to say. Nat squeezes his wrist.

Nick’s voice gets louder. “Clint, are you in danger?”

“No. No, Nick. Everything’s fine. Except me. I’m not fine.”

*

Nick says he’s putting Clint on twelve weeks paid medical leave, as of three days ago. A therapist will call him this afternoon to set up his first appointment. Natasha’s job is to get him there.

“I’m proud of you,” Nick says, before he hangs up. Clint knows he should have expected that very reaction from Nick. Nick is all about having healthy responses to things.

Clint puts down the phone and reaches for Natasha. “I’m sorry,” he says into her hair. “I know it’s been hard without Phil. For both of us. I should have…”

“Don’t,” Natasha interrupts. “Don’t put this all on yourself. I’m a big girl.”

“Okay,” he says, rubbing her back slowly and ignoring the dampness seeping through the shoulder of his t-shirt. “Okay.”

*

Thursday, September 30, 2004

*

Virginia Daniels is a middle-aged white woman from Wisconsin who’s just old enough to be Clint’s mother. He figures she was probably assigned to him for that reason alone.

That, or Arthur, her rescued pit bull mix. He sniffs Clint when he comes in, then returns to his little green doggie bed in the corner of the office. A few minutes into his first appointment - with Natasha waiting for him just outside the door, her head in the newest Harry Potter - Clint pats the couch cushion next to him. Arthur takes the invitation, jumps on the couch, and rests his head on Clint’s thigh.

Once everyone is settled and the pleasantries are dealt with, Virginia starts off by asking, “Can you tell me what made you decide to come and talk with me?”

Clint shifts. “I, um… I’m having a depressive episode, I think. It happens to me sometimes, every once in awhile. I, um, I don’t want to get out of bed. I feel… useless and so I’m _being_ useless but I don’t want to _do_ anything. I don’t want to be…” Here he trails off.

“Do you feel like you might hurt yourself?”

“I don’t think so? I’m not suicidal, I just, I don’t want to feel, to be like this anymore.” He wonders if that counts.

“How long have you been feeling like this?”

“This time? About a week and a half, I guess, it’s been really bad. But it probably started in the middle of June.”

Virginia nods, and asks, “Did something in particular happen on those dates?”

“Yeah, um… yeah.” He shakes his head and tries to focus. Stress and fear and awkwardness are making his brain fuzzy. “First my friend, some stuff happened on a mission and afterwards my friend, Phil, he… We got into an argument and he left. And then a couple weeks ago, I went to see my old girlfriend, from when I was a teenager. We were, we were going to have a baby together and, um, some stuff happened and… so this was the first time I saw her in 16 years, and she basically told me to get lost.”

“Sounds like you’ve been dealing with a lot of rejection, lately,” Virginia observes.

Clint thinks about Jackie and Phil - and then his mind flashes back to Tim, to Dustin, to Barney. When it comes to rejection, there is no ‘lately.’ More like, ‘forever.’

Clint very quickly runs out of words, and for the rest of the session, Virginia talks about Arthur - how she found him at the Humane Society, how she paid ten dollars for him and then spent eighty-five dollars on toys and accessories, how he hates the sound of the garbage truck on Wednesday mornings but has absolutely no problem with the vacuum cleaner.

Arthur stares up at him the whole time, and butts his head into his hand every time Clint stops petting him.

*

Virginia gives him a new therapy workbook and thirty days’ worth of Wellbutrin, because apparently, “An antidepressant can help you start feeling better faster, and make the therapy process easier.”

Natasha is waiting for him outside of Virginia's office, which is tucked in a corner near the LA base’s medical wing. She ushers him quietly down to the parking garage, and uses a SHIELD company car to drive him back to his apartment.

They get home. He eats half of the sandwich Nat fixes him, then gets up from the kitchen table to go to the couch and watch television. He finds himself in his bedroom, instead, and lays down. When he rolls over to take his aids out, he sees Nat watching him from the doorway.

She’s frowning. She looks sad. He wants to reach out and comfort her, say something about therapy and work and hope, but he’s exhausted. He closes his eyes, instead, and rolls back to face the wall.

*

Thursday, October 7, 2004

*

“You want to tell me about your family?” Virginia asks. She’s wearing an orange sweater today, with yellow pants, and the whole outfit is atrocious. He would love it, if he could feel anything at all. He’s only been on the antidepressant for a week. Apparently, he needs to be patient.

Clint shrugs at Virginia’s question, and strokes Arthur’s head where it’s resting on his thigh. Arthur sighs, and Clint says. “I don’t have any family.”

“You don’t?”

He reminds himself that talk therapy only works if you actually _talk_. That’s what his workbook says, and he knows Nat’s experience a few years ago is a testament to the fact. He needs to be functional again, if only for her sake. He can’t keep making her do all the work.

“Well, I did,” he finally admits. “I mean, originally. But they’re all gone now.”

“Do you want to talk about what happened to them?”

“No. But I probably need to, right?” he asks, directing his question more to Arthur than to Virginia. Talking is what therapy is for, after all.

“A lot of what we experience in childhood, with our families, influences the rest of our lives,” Virginia says.

Clint huffs. “So I had a shitty childhood, so I’m screwed forever?”

“No.” she says. “It means that your early experiences influence how you see the world, so when you examine those experiences, you can start to unpack how they’ve influenced you.”

“So like how Nick always lectured me about not trusting men in authority, because my dad was - was how he is? I made that connection a long time ago, it didn’t make any difference to, to how I felt.”

Virginia leans forward. “What was your dad like?”

Clint rolls his eyes, more as an excuse to disengage than anything else. “I remember being scared of him? I mean, I was a kid, maybe I was just a really annoying kid that pissed him off, but I remember being scared a lot of the time. All the time.”

“What about your mom?”

Here, he bows his head, and thinks the old photograph he keeps in his wallet. Natasha had a copy of it blown up and framed for him, and he hung it on his wall, but he’s been keeping the original close since he went on medical leave. “She was… she was scared, too, I think. When I think back on it. I think I just thought being scared was normal.”

“What about your dad was scary?”

“I don’t know. He, um.” Clint stops for a moment, reminds himself he’s here to _talk_. “You know, he hit us, I guess. Yelled a lot. Thought it was normal.”

“Do you think it’s normal now?”

He shakes his head. “I know that it’s not. Like, I know. In my head. That normal people don’t do that. But I, you know, maybe I was just really frustrating to take care of.”

“Have you ever been frustrated?” Virginia asks, cocking her head to the side.

More times than he can count. And usually at himself. “Yeah.”

“Imagine you got really, really frustrated. The most frustrated you’ve ever been. And Natasha was the reason. Would you hit her?”

His heart jumps into his throat just at the suggestion. “Jesus!” he chokes out. “That’s sick. No way.”

“So if it’s not okay for you to hit Natasha, how was it okay that your dad hit you?” Virginia asks quietly, and his nerves settle a bit at each calm word. “You were a kid. Who hits a kid? Not someone normal.”

“I… I guess,” he admits.

“What happened to your dad?”

Clint takes a deep breath and steels himself. “There was a car crash. He’d been drinking, and he crashed the car, and they died. They had to--”

He chokes for a moment, and Virginia asks quietly, “Clint?”

“The car caught on fire. So. They had to identify them based on, you know, dental records and shit. For a while afterwards, I hoped that maybe they got it wrong, that it was someone else in the car who died, and that Mom was waiting in hiding and was going to come in one night and take us away from everything. But then she didn’t, and they ended up confirming it was her. So me and my brother, we went into the system.”

There’s a long pause while he wipes his eyes with the sleeve of his shirt. Virginia smiles at him, then, in the glow of her bright sweater, and asks, “You want to hug Arthur for a bit?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay.”

A few minutes pass where he just… hugs the dog and tries to swallow down his emotions. He knows Virginia won’t judge him for crying, and that isn’t even what he’s worried about. He’s afraid that if he starts crying now, he won’t be able to stop.

But if he doesn’t talk, if he doesn’t _do the work_ here in this quiet room with a trained counselor and a rescue dog, he’s never going to feel better. Because it’s not just about being functional for SHIELD. It’s not just about being able to be there for Natasha. So much of his past lives on inside his head _all_ the _time_. He hears his dad’s voice any time he screws up, any time another man gets loud or gets angry. He sees the tense line of Barney’s shoulders on the back of every person who’s walked away from him.

When he’s out on a mission, and the grass and the soil and the wind smell just right, he expects to open his eyes and see the circus tents going up in the distance, to hear Jackie’s voice floating on the breeze, telling him it’s time to get ready. And he’s always just a little bit disappointed when he looks around and finds that he’s just standing in an empty field.

He wonders what it would be like to be alone in his head. He’ll do the work, if that means he might get to find out how that feels.

He pulls back slowly, and Arthur rests his head back on Clint’s knee. “After my parents died, me and my brother went into the system, and they would send us to these homes, and Barney, he hated them. He said they were just like Dad. And a couple of them were okay, I guess. But the last placement…”

“What about it?” Virginia asks. It’s terrifying how non-threatening she can make herself be when she asks horrible questions that tangle him up inside.

He starts to pick at a hangnail, catches himself, and moves his hand to scratch behind Arthur’s freckled ear. Arthur lets out a happy wheeze. “Our foster dad, he was always messing around with Barney. Giving him a lot of attention and stuff, right? And Barney thought it was great at first. But then it got weird, and then one night, Barney woke me up, and he was crying, and there was blood in his shorts and running down his legs. He said we had to pack up and go.

“The circus was in town, so we ran. And it sucked, maybe it wasn’t any better, maybe it was worse in a lot of ways, but nobody ever hurt us like that there. They hurt us. But not like that.”

“Did the man who hurt Barney hurt you, too?” Virginia asks gently.

“No,” he shakes his head. He doesn’t know if that answer makes things better or worse in the grand scheme of things. Terror is terror. “It was just Barney. I don’t know why he left me alone.

“After that… Barney hated ever getting attention. He thought I was crazy when I started having my own act. Said that people were going to look at me, and he didn’t want Trick training me, at first. He cooled down about it after a couple years, got to be friends with Trick, but at first…”

He shrugs, remembering the screaming and the fear, and swallowing it down as it tries to surge back up. It’s been decades. He can do this. “When we got there that first night, they cleaned us up and hid us when the cops came around, and we swore we’d do anything if they would just… take us away. From that.”

He stops for a moment, presses his face back down into Arthur’s cheek, then sits back up again. Arthur raises his head a bit to follow the movement, and Clint drops a kiss on his nose before continuing.

“But then Barney, he…. I always did what he said, and even when I got my big act, I was still doing what he said. It wasn’t until I got together with Jackie and she got pregnant, I didn’t do what he told me to do, I wanted to keep it and make a family. And for a couple months… there was this span of a couple months when I was so happy, I had a family again.”

He smiles at the memory, and then it dims. He shakes his head. “And then my mentor at the circus, Trick, he shot me. Nearly killed me. And then Barney left me in the hospital and Jackie gave the baby up and left, too. And I never saw any of them again.”

He sniffs and rubs his nose. Virginia waits for him to look back up to say, “Until two weeks ago.”

“Yeah,” he croaks. “I found Jackie. And she told me to leave. So now… Now there’s this whole mess of people that I used to be so connected with that I’m never gonna talk to again. It’s like… it’s everyone who knew me before. Everyone who knew who I was, who…. who knows all my stories and can tell them to me. I’ve lost all of them and I keep losing more.”

Virginia tilts her head back and forth, saying yes and no at the same time. “Generally, brothers who abandon you and mentors who shoot you aren’t people you really want to keep close. It’s okay to let go of toxic people - whether there’s two of them or twenty of them in your life.”

That’s fine and all, except-- “But Jackie? She’s not - she’s never been-”

“It’s sad what happened with Jackie,” Virginia says, and her confidence is soothing. “It’s okay to be upset about what happened from beginning to end. But it doesn’t mean that you did something wrong that made you lose her. It doesn’t mean she meant to lose you. Life happened.”

“Shit happened.”

“Shit happens, sometimes. But you tracked her down, and you reached out to her, to see if that connection was still there. No matter how that visit ended up, the important thing, for you, was that you reached out. A lot of people in your position wouldn’t have.”

*

Saturday, October 9, 2004

*

Meredith answers her phone with a perky, “Hey, I heard you’re depressed! What’s that about?”

He doesn’t feel capable of laughter anymore, but he manages a snort. “Tactful as always, Mer.”

“Tact is for the weak,” she replies. “What’s up?”

“How did you know I’m depressed?”

“Natasha told Lraaz told Donna told me,” she responds. “We have a very efficient system. The last time we used it, I ended up mailing Donna my fuck-me stilettos.”

“They were good shoes,” he agrees. He remembers them from April’s wedding, the way they’d lengthened Donna’s legs and given her just just that extra bit of confidence.

“I know, right? So how’s therapy?”

He pauses, not quite knowing how to answer, because therapy is awful and necessary and enlightening and exhausting. “I have homework,” he finally admits.

She lets out a groan of dismay, and he can just see her on the other end of the line, head thrown back and her face twisted in an exaggerated grimace. “Oh god, I hate therapy homework. Are they making you keep a mood log?”

“Yeah. Every day. And this week I have to make a list. And I… I can’t.”

“Hmm. What’s the list supposed to be of?”

“Five good things about me that don’t have to do with my job.”

“So you’re having trouble narrowing it down to just five?” Meredith asks, her voice sparkling.

“You know that’s not it,” he grumbles.

“Oh. Well.” Now there’s distinct challenge in her voice, and in his vision of her she sits up straight and squares her shoulders. Then she says, “Well, let me think. Good sense of humor. Good taste in movies. Caring, empathetic, a good friend, a conscientious lover--”

“Mer!”

“What? It’s true! You’re very good in the sack. You have a good mind for math and science, and before you claim that’s a work thing I would like to point out that the Stephen Hawking on your bookshelf is not on SHIELD’s required reading list. You’ll do whatever it takes to keep your friends physically and emotionally safe. You’re gentle and kind. You’re a great dad--”

“What? What do you mean, a great dad?” He’s shocked. He’s known her for fourteen years. She knows all his stories and all his secrets. But he’s never told her about Bailey, never admitted that yes, he is a father - though not a good one. He’s never told her why he isn’t.

Maybe he should. Fourteen years is a long time. Fourteen years feels like another life - a life that they’ve built together, the five of them, no matter what corner of the globe they’re on. They’re all just a phone call away, and that has to mean something.

“Well, if you’re not Natasha’s father figure, they you’re her older-brother-figure, and the point still stands: you’re obviously great with her.”

“Oh,” he says, still reeling. He wishes she were here, and not in Dubuque or Albuquerque or wherever she’s stationed this week. He would lean his head on her shoulder and maybe, maybe...  

“Was that five? I think that was at least five.”

He sniffs - his emotions are everywhere today, apparently - and doesn’t say anything. The line is quiet for a few moments, and then Meredith says, “Well, if you’re all out of words for now, I can either let you go, or I can tell you about the priceless artefact I accidentally broke on my last mission.”

This chuckle is a little more wet, but a little more genuine. “Is it classified?”

“Completely classified. But I’ll tell you anyway.”

*

Thursday, October 21, 2004

*

“What happened when you got to the circus? Who took care of you?” Virginia asks. Her sweater is white and normal-looking, but she’s wearing a rhinestone jack-o-lantern pin. Clint is beginning to suspect she likes holidays and gaudy decorations. She’s going to be terrifying when Christmas rolls around.

“Kind of… everybody but nobody, I guess,” he explains. “We worked. We bunked where we could. We ate with everyone else.”

“What about the people?”

“Carson kept an eye on us. George and Jim, sometimes. Trick.”

“Trick is the man who shot you?”

“Yeah.”

“You called him your mentor, before. What was he like?”

Clint shrugs. It’s funny, in a dark kind of way, how the man who shot him is still less terrifying than the memory of the man who raised him. They both left scars. But Dad got his in first. “He was… mean, But he was still nicer than my dad, so I didn’t really notice, I guess. He taught me how to shoot, made me part of his act, gave me my own act.”

“Did you like performing?”

Clint pauses to think, because performing is tangled up with a lot of other things from those days. “I didn’t really like the attention, I guess. I liked the challenge. I liked doing well. If I messed up, that was bad. Trick would yell about, about money and ticket sales. He was always talking about money. But so long as I was useful and filling seats, he left me alone.”

“What happened when Jackie became pregnant?”

“He’d… He and Barney both yelled. Trick would say how I had to do well, now, really well, if I wanted to take care of her. So I just… tried to keep my head down, after that. Guess it didn’t work out too well.”

He shakes his head and continues. “I don’t know what happened that ended up with me getting shot. I don’t remember. I woke up in the hospital. And then Barney, he thought I was dead for a while. And when he finally came to see me at the hospital, he refused to take me home. He just…”

His breath catches at the memory. “He just left me there.”

“So you were in the hospital, had been there for a few weeks with a gunshot wound, and then Barney gets there,” Virginia states, like she’s trying to gain clarity on the situation. “His brother, who he thought was dead?”

“Yeah,” Clint agrees at her raised eyebrow.

“His brother, who he thought was dead,” she continues, “is lying in a hospital bed after what sounds like a survival against some very long odds, and he’s demanding to be released immediately to re-join the circus. What was that experience like, from his perspective?”

Oh, Clint hates these thought exercises. “He was scared,” he remembers. “He hid it pretty quick, and when I asked about Jackie and Bailey he got all pissed.”

“Don’t tell me what you remember,” Virginia says. “Tell me what _he_ went through.”

Clint thinks back, tries to look at what happened through Barney’s eyes. “He…. He thought I was dead. And that… that he’d helped make it happen. And then he found out I wasn’t and rushed out to find me. But I was really hurt. And all I wanted was to go home.”

“After Barney left, how much longer were you in the hospital?”

“I don’t know - two weeks, maybe a little more? Then CPS put me with this couple that had experience with injured kids,” he says.

“So you could say they were in the right place to help you get better? Would Barney have been able to do what they did?”

His pulse jumps, and it’s sixteen years ago, and he’s trapped, and -- “He could have taken me home, where I--”

“Clint.” With a single word, Virginia halts his spiral.

He takes a deep breath, and _thinks._ Barney had been taking care of him forever, since they went into the system, since before that. He always acted like Clint was so stupid, like his choices were always wrong. He’d blown his top when Clint got Jackie pregnant, said he was ruining his life getting tied up like that. Barney never seemed to understand what Clint was looking for.

But he never hit him, and he let Jackie move into their trailer. He even learned to use the blood pressure cuff to help monitor Jackie’s hypertension. He was impossibly, frustratingly practical. But he cared.

“He would have brought me home, but he wouldn’t have been able to do anything like that. I’d’ve just… been stuck. I wouldn’t have gotten better,” he realizes. “Is that why he left me?”

“So that you could get the help you needed from people who were equipped to help you?” She asks. Then at his nod, she adds, “Sounds like a brotherly thing to do.”

“Even if it meant I’d hate him?” Clint asks in a small voice.

“It sounds like keeping his little brother safe was more important. How old was he at the time?”

“Nineteen. Same age as… Shit, same age Nat is. That’s…”

“Young.”

Clint nods. “Really young. I always looked back and thought he was this big, I don’t know, spectre, just like my dad. This big personality overshadowing everything. But he was… he was just a kid, then.”

“He was the same age Nat is. If Nat were in his position right now, would you want her to do the same thing?”

He nods. He thinks Natasha…. She’s already been in this position now, hasn’t she? She’s already done this. They were lost in the woods, and she’d had to leave him and Phil behind in order to get them the help they’d needed. Phil, in his delirium, hadn’t realized that’s what she was doing. He’d thought she was running away and abandoning them, and screamed, terrified, for her to come back, not to leave them. She must have heard some of it before she was fully out of earshot, no matter how hard she ran.

She must have thought the same thing that Barney had - that this was the only way to help.

“Do you understand now why Barney did it?”

He hesitates. Understanding Barney was always such a challenge when he was a kid - a young, tangled-up kid who thought his brother was stubborn and invincible, and could never be forced to do anything he didn’t want to do. Looking back now as an adult, he can see that Barney was just like Natasha is now: young, more pragmatic than sympathetic, and just trying their damndest to keep Clint safe.

Part of Clint feels guilty for burdening them. But the rest of him, the sensible part of him, warms at the thought that yes, they do care, and this is how they show it. He just needs to be able to see it.

“Yeah,” he says. “I think I do.”

*

Monday, October 25, 2004

*

Lraaz sends Clint a book of abstract designs and a 24-pack of Pentel markers. _These helped Mehdi after 9/11,_ her note says. _Give them a try._

So on a day when Clint doesn’t have therapy and Natasha is off canoodling (“Don’t call it canoodling, you are not a Golden Girl”) with Agent Jelimo, Clint takes advantage of the quiet apartment to get started.

The pattern is intricate, and Clint loses time choosing the colors, following the lines, and filling in the spaces. He’s finished one, and halfway through a second page by the time Nat comes back.

“Is this Lraaz’s present?” she asks, sitting across the table from Clint and reaching to pull the first image closer.

“Yeah,” Clint says, not looking up. “It’s surprisingly meditative. Like… it shuts down your brain the way running does, sometimes.”

“Can I try one?”

Clint pulls the page he’s working on out of the book, and passes the rest to her. She spends a few minutes leafing through the different patterns, and finally decides on a circular design.

Some indeterminate amount of time later, he finishes his page and looks over at Nat’s. The design is filled with yellows and oranges, and there’s a large section in the center filled with a cool green. He lets out a low chuckle.

“What?” she asks, suspicious.

He gestures at the drawing. “That’s what your brain scan looked like after you met me.”

She looks from him to the paper and back again. “Really? The fMRI scans?”

“Yeah, I mean, not when you were first brought in. Then you were all red and hot pink. This is closer to what it looked like around when we started hanging out together.”

“Is that why they let you spend time with me?” she asks, tilting her head. “I always wondered what drove that decision.”

Clint shrugs. “I guess.”

She gives him a long look. Then she sets her marker down and reaches to take his hand, resting their arms on the wood table. “You saved my life, you know.”

“No, I mean, I just--”

“Clint,” she interrupts and gives his hand a small squeeze. “You saved my life. Just… accept that you did something good, okay?”

Clint nods. Nat takes her hand back and bends back over her work. Clint stares at her for a while, trying to imagine what his life would be like without her. He can’t.

“I love you, kiddo.”

She rolls her eyes. “I know.”

“Okay, Han Solo,” he responds tartly, and she throws the green marker at him.

They color for a while, and Clint… he doesn’t stew, he wouldn’t call it stewing. But he lets some things simmer for another half an hour, and then he says, “You don’t owe me anything, you know. I mean, you’ve saved my life a bunch of times since then. Just a couple months ago, even, you got me out of the woods. Literally.”

She glances up at him. “I still have to make up for…”

“Make up for what?” She shakes her head, and he sighs. “Nat, whatever you’re thinking of, it’s not gonna change--”

“It’s my fault,” she interrupts.

“What’s your fault? The crash? That was a technical failure, there was no way any of us could have known it was going to happen. And you got me out of that, too.”

“ _This_ is my fault,” she says, pointing her marker at him. “You, here. On leave, stuck in bed, in therapy, it’s my fault this happened to you.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” Clint gets up from his chair and steps quickly around the table to take the seat next to her, close enough to take her hand and lean in. “Slow down, Nat, no, why on earth would you think this is your fault?”

“I found Jackie, didn’t I?” She asks, and her voice is higher than normal, scared and not doing a very good job of hiding it. Clint doesn’t ever want her to be scared. He curls an arm around her stiff shoulders, and she continues, “I sent you to see her. I didn’t stop to check if she would want to see you. I didn’t think about what would happen if she rejected you, and then she did. I should have known it would trigger your depression, I should have seen it, I should have stopped it.”

He tightens his arm around her. “No, no, Nat. Nat. This isn’t your fault. This is a hundred and ten percent not your fault.”

She nods, decisive and completely sure of herself. “Yes it is.”

“No, look, come on. I was already depressed after Phil left, right? You wanted to do something to help, and you did the very best thing - you found Jackie for me. You found her, Nat.” His voice catches at that last bit.

“And then I let her break your heart.”

Ah. There it is - that’s what’s going on. He shakes his head. “My heart broke when I lost her. Wasn’t her fault. Wasn’t mine. It just happened. And for sixteen years, I’ve been searching, letting it drive me crazy, and you… you _found her_! Do you even--”

He raises his hands, unable for a moment to explain, and then drops the back down and pulls her closer. “I don’t have to wonder any more. I know that she’s safe and she’s happy, now, and I didn’t have that before.”

“You’re still depressed,” she points out flatly.

He nods, because he can recognize, now, what this is. And he knows this isn’t the first time it’s happened. After Noelle, after Tim, after Dustin… After Barney… When people leave him, this is how he reacts. The only thing that’s a surprise is how long it’s taken him to notice the pattern. He hopes that now that he has, maybe he can break it.

“This is-- but I’m getting help this time, right? And I know what’s happening now, and why. In the long run this is probably really good for me, okay? Seeing Jackie again brought up a lot of stuff and it overwhelmed me for a little while, but now I’m working through it. I’m going to get better,” he says, and right now he believes it, because he needs Nat to believe it. Nat needs to believe it, and he’ll do everything he can to make sure she does.

“You promise?” Nat asks, voice shaky.

“I promise,” he swears, and draws a cross on his heart. “And you’re helping, okay? Getting me to places and keeping me fed and just being here, being my friend, that’s helping a lot.”

She stiffens slightly, though he doesn’t know why, and he adds, “Thank you for that, Nat. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

“Okay,” she says, and sniffles a little.

“Okay. Now, here’s the really important question.” He gestures at the paper in front of her, the echo of her mind when it was coming back to itself. “Are you done coloring? Because I want to put yours on the fridge.”

*

Thursday, November 4, 2004

*

“My friend - Rosita - she says that I define myself by other people,” Clint tells Arthur. Virginia is in her chair, listening in.

“Is that a bad thing?”

He frowns at the question. “Rosita seems to think it is.”

“We all define ourselves in some respect by the people we surround ourselves with,” Virginia explains. Her sweater is orange, but different from the last orange one. Virginia has multiple orange sweaters. “People say they have their parents’ eyes, or a friend’s taste in movies.”

“But I… I mean, I know what Donna and Rosita and them, I know what their favorite movies are, and I just watch those, even when they aren’t around.”

Virginia smiles. “So when you miss Donna, you watch Donna’s favorite movie?”

“Yeah,” he says. It’s _Stargate_. He watched it on Tuesday.

“What’s your favorite movie, Clint?”

“That’s the thing,” he says, sitting up straight for the first time all afternoon. “I don’t know.”

“When you watch movies with your friends, who picks what you watch? Do you?”

“No, I guess… I guess I go with whatever everyone else wants to watch. Rosita also tells me I’m too passive. She, um, she has a lot of opinions about me.”

“Does that bother you?”

“She’s usually right about this stuff. She’s been telling me for years that I need to be more, uh, active, involved, I guess. In all my relationships.”

Virginia nods like that makes sense. “Like being the one who chooses the movie?”

“I do do that, though, with Phil--” He cuts the word short.

“You choose the movie when you’re with Phil?”

“I think yeah. It’s… it’s easy, with him, to take my turn.” He pauses, then adds, “It _was_ easy.”

“Because you trust him?”

“Yeah, and that’s…”

“You’ve said before that you don’t trust men easily. What makes Phil the exception?”

Clint frowns. There’s a framed photo on his bookshelf that he got from Phil. When Phil sits next to him on the couch, something tight in his chest loosens. And every day since the day they met, Phil has shown that Natasha’s safety and well-being is his number one priority. He’s never wanted anything from Clint except… except to just be Clint.

Nick found him and got him into SHIELD, got him doing something good. If Clint could exchange his own dad for someone else, he would choose Nick every time. But that’s a… a role that he still finds himself uncomfortable dealing with. Nick hasn’t ever abused his authority over him, has fostered him and been kind to him. But Clint doesn’t know what he’d do, what he’d have done, if Nick wasn’t like that. Would he have stayed with SHIELD anyway?

And then there were his dad and Trick and Barney, who made him so afraid of doing something wrong, of being a bother, and getting hurt because of it. Getting beaten or shot or abandoned because of it. But… Virginia said a while ago about his dad - that someone normal doesn’t hit kids, that it’s the abuser who’s at fault, not him.

Nick’s not an abuser. Phil’s not an abuser. He _knows_ this. But--

“I’m still scared of getting hurt,” he says. “My… I’ve had a couple boyfriends since I joined SHIELD. And I guess, I wanted to be with them, but I was still scared, because of… it was… I was all tangled up and I was so scared to be hurt, that I didn’t open up the way you’re supposed to in a relationship, so they… they didn’t work out. I thought that with Phil… I felt safe picking the movies. But then… we fought and I yelled at him and he left, so…”

“So now the question is,” Virginia says. “Can you reach out to Phil - to any man - and trust that it will work out? Can you be okay with it _not_ working out?”

He shakes his head. In his experience, once you open yourself to someone, you can never get them out, and they’ll always be able to hurt you. “I don’t know.”

“That’s what we’re going to work on, then. Allowing yourself to reach out and open up. And being okay with it not working out.”

That sounds… terrifying. That sounds like opening the door to a lot of potential for hurt, like it’s just asking for rejection to take over his mind and his heart and leave him lying in bed, licking his wounds alone. Wouldn’t it be better to learn to close himself off, to seal out everyone and never give anyone the power to hurt him?

But locking everyone out would mean locking Nat out. It would mean locking Nick out. And Rosita, and Meredith. Lraaz. Donna.

Phil.

He pets Arthur for a few minutes; the dog rolls onto his back and presents his belly to be rubbed. Clint obliges. Eventually he looks back up at Virginia and says, “I keep thinking about Phil. I… I miss him. And I keep thinking -- I keep feeling like it’s my fault he left.”

Virginia clasps her hands together in her lap, a sure sign that she’s about to question all his assumptions and hurt his brain. He loves and hates that in equal measure. “Explain to me how it’s your fault.”

“I yelled at him, didn’t I?” He asks, remembering a cold hospital room, an IV bag, a blanket. “I drove him away. I yelled at him, and then he left for super secret spy rehab, and it’s been months, and… he’s gone.”

Virginia nods. “Sounds like, if there’s fault to be laid, it should go with Phil.”

Clint shakes his head in response, sure about the fact that, “I shouldn’t have yelled at him.”

“What did you say to him when you yelled at him?”

He looks down. Arthur has a piece of dust on his nose. He brushes it away. “I told him that he’d put us in danger, and he should have talked to us. And that he didn’t trust us.”

She lifts a shoulder, unconcerned. “All of those things are true.”

“Yeah, but, I shouldn’t have yelled at him.”

“Maybe not,” she replies, going along with him for the moment. “But you have a right to your anger. He and Natasha are your family, and, whether he mean to or not, he put all three of you in danger. It’s okay to be angry at him for that.”

Clint sits and chews on that for a while; he knows there’s something deeper here that he can’t quite process all by himself.

“I know that… I shouldn’t feel like I have to walk on eggshells with people,” he begins hesitantly. “And that it’s ok for me to stick up for myself. Living with Rosita and Lraaz and them, has kind of proven that? Because we’ve gotten into it before and we’re still friends. So maybe that’s why I felt comfortable yelling at Phil. Until afterwards, when he left.”

“That’s when you started to panic?”

“Yeah,” he says. The whole world felt just a little bit wrong after Phil left, and Clint tried to fix it with throw pillows and missions and reunion trips to Chicago. “And I haven’t heard from him since. So it feels like my fault. And… I miss him.”

“It’s okay to be angry at him, and to miss him, and to feel hurt - and to feel all of those things at the same time.”

“I guess,” Clint admits. Other people have told him the same thing, though he doesn’t quite see it, can’t cut through the confusion of his feelings.

“The three of you went through a terrifying experience together.”

He shakes his head at that. “We weren’t really together; Nat left and Phil wasn’t really all there.”

“Tell me how Nat experienced it.”

He sighs, and tilts his head back to look up at the ceiling and remember. “I guess… She had to jump out of a plane - but I think she really enjoyed that part, actually. And then she had to hike through the woods. And then she had to run through the woods, because…. me and Phil were counting on her to get help. If she didn’t, if something happened to her, I probably would have made it out, but Phil wouldn’t have.”

“And how did Phil experience it?” Virginia asks.

He doesn’t look down from the ceiling. “He said… he said afterward that he didn’t think it had gotten that bad. That he didn’t know it was going to happen.”

But it did, and they were all still dealing with the consequences. Clint thinks back to when he realized something was really, really wrong. Phil was already starting to fade by then. “I guess he started off really confused? Before he lost touch with reality. And then he, he was so scared the whole time it was happening, and I was trying to take care of him but nothing really helped or made him feel better. Not until he got to the hospital and the doctors could help him.”

He brings his head back down to look at Virginia. “And then I went and yelled at him.”

“You yelled at him. After everything you went through,” she adds. “You think you had much control of your emotions, then? After six days trapped in the woods with no food or sleep, and your friend dying in your arms?”

“I thought he was gonna die,” Clint admits, and it hurts to remember. He curls his chest down closer to Arthur, seeking comfort. “I don’t know why I yelled. It was the first thing that came to mind.”

He shakes his head. “I guess it’s lucky I yelled at him instead of trying to kiss him.”

Virginia cocks her head to the side, because this is entirely new territory for them. At least, talking about it overtly. She probably already knows how she feels about Phil, because he knows he’s not that subtle. “Did you want to kiss him?”

“I kind of always want to kiss Phil,” he admits. A little bit at the beginning, maybe. It’s been running strong ever since Phil found him the photograph of his parents, the one that lives in his wallet now. “He’s Phil, you know?”

Maybe Virginia will ask outright, maybe she won’t, but Clint has been trying to be honest with her - and with himself - for weeks, now, so he adds, “I’m pretty sure I’m in love with him. I never told him. I didn’t want to reach out and…”

He sniffs and rubs his nose, because there are still nights where he wakes up to the feeling of Phil seizing in his arms, and he can’t make it go away. “He’s my best friend, and I didn’t ever want to make him uncomfortable, to put him in the position where he had to say no.”

He looks down at Arthur, who’s fallen asleep with his head in Clint’s lap, and rests his hands gently on the dog’s head. He doesn’t want to wake him up.

Virginia gives him a moment, then brings the conversation back on topic. “So you’re friends, you’ve had a strong emotional attachment to him for several years, and then you went through a near-death experience together, and you’re angry at him for causing it.”

He nods, still looking down at the dog. “I was. But I yelled at him and he went away--”

She interrupts him to ask, “Do you think maybe he’s ashamed?”

“What?” he asks, looking up at her in confusion.

“He might also think you were right to yell at him. You’re both acting in a somewhat parental role for Natasha, you’ve been working together as a team, you’re practically family - that’s not something someone throws away just because they got yelled at.”

“So he left, and he’s staying away because…” he pauses for a moment, imagines Phil’s train of thought. It’s not a difficult one to follow now that it’s been pointed out. “He’s ashamed of what happened? And he doesn’t know how to fix it?”

“If he bottles his emotions so much that he didn’t even indicate to you or Natasha that he had an alcohol problem, he might not even realize that’s what he’s doing,” she explains. “Have there been other times where he’s expressed fear or shame over his behavior?”

“Like the fact that something in his life was going wrong for months before this happened, and he refused to tell us?” He asks, surprised by the sudden sharpness in his tone. Emotions. Everywhere.

At Virginia’s raised eyebrow, he stops to really consider the question. “He was always… He’d always feel bad if he thought he was neglecting us. Like if me or Nat got hurt on a mission. It was never his fault, but he’d get, he’d get this look on his face like he was really beating himself up over it, but he wouldn’t… he wouldn’t talk about it.”

“So what would happen?”

Clint smiles. “Nat would usually throw something at him and demand expensive presents and ice cream. So he would go get it - the ice cream - and with Nat, you know, she’d ham it up, get all excited, and that would make him… it’s like he would come out of hiding. Even though he was already there.”

“Is it possible that the reason he’s stayed away this time is because he’s ashamed of putting you and Nat in harm’s way, and then yelling at you after you worked so hard to rescue him?”

“That is… entirely possible,” Clint admits. He can see it play out in Phil’s head that way. It fits. “In which case… It’s really not about me, then? It’s really his… emotional constipation… that’s the problem. Right?”

Virginia shrugs. “It could be.”

“Oh,” he says. “Is that what ‘not taking it personally’ means?”

“That’s it, exactly,” she says. “People act based on their own fears and feelings, and those very rarely have anything to do with you.”

“Oh.” He feels like maybe… maybe he’s finally starting to get it. “I’ll have to tell Rosita I figured it out. She’ll be thrilled.”

*

Tuesday, November 16, 2004

*

Natasha comes over after dinner to watch the second Harry Potter movie and eat cheesecake. Clint sits and watches, but his mind keeps drifting back to how Virginia called them - him and Phil and Natasha - a family. He remembers the first time he saw Nat, and what she said to him a few weeks ago about saving her. He thinks about all the time that went on in-between: phone calls and movies and missions and time spent together. And he remembers the first time they saw this movie, at the premier, when Nat had teasingly called him ‘Dad.’ He’d flinched, and her face had fallen, and he realizes now that that’s how she sees him, and that’s how he sees her, and why haven’t they ever talked about this before?

That flinch must have killed her. He never realized.

The movie ends and Nat gets up to bring their dishes into the kitchen. When she comes back in the room, Clint reaches out his hand and says, “Nat. C’mere, I want to talk to you.”

She gives him a concerned look and lets him pull her down into his side, rather than her previous spot on the other end of the sectional. “Clint?” She asks.

He gazes down at her, and can’t come up with anything to say other than, “I love you.”

There’s the head tilt again. “I am aware of that,” she responds evenly.

“I know that you’re not my kid. But you make me very happy.”

Nat’s eyes start to well up, which he expected, but her jaw clenches, which he did not. She turns her face away.

“I’ve upset you,” he says. It’s not a question.

Nat shrugs, then shakes her head. “It’s not the same,” she says.

“What’s not the same?”

“You have a kid, you don’t need me.”

He frowns in confusion. “I don’t have… Nat, you’re the only one I have.”

“No, I’m not. All you care about--” She stops for a moment, pull in a sharp breath, and continues. “Bailey’s the one who’s yours. Not me.”

Clint’s stomach drops. “Nat, you’re-- you don’t have to be--”

“Yes I do! He’s your blood. I can’t compete with that,” she finishes. She’s so tense, and her hands are clenched so tightly in her lap that her knuckles are turning white.

He’s screwed this up. Apparently he’s been screwing it up for a long time without even realizing it, and Nat’s had to deal with the consequences. The rejection and hurt. He pulls her closer and rests his cheek on the top of her head. She smells like Nat, and that grounds him, even though she’s sitting stiffly at his side.

“You _are_ mine,” he says with as much conviction he can muster. “I’m sorry it took me this long to see that. But you’ve been mine from day one, and you’re going to stay mine.”

She trembles, and he takes a deep breath and lets it out. He needs to say this right. He needs to make sure she understands that her place in his life is irrevocable. “I spent a lot of time chasing after this dream of finding Jackie and finding Bailey and having a family. And I was so busy doing that, I didn’t see that I already had one.”

“Family isn’t blood,” he says. “That’s not what it’s about. Family is the people you trust will love you no matter what. That’s all.”

She doesn’t respond, so he keeps going, hoping she’ll begin to see how much he means this. “I love you no matter what. That makes you my family. That makes you _my kid_. If I have to run down to city hall and apply for an adult adoption to make you believe me, I’ll do it.”

“You’d do that?” She asks timidly, finally looking up at him.

“In a heartbeat,” he responds, meeting her eyes and trying to pour every measure of reassurance into his voice. “All you’d get out of it is a few mismatched dishes and a ratty sectional, but I’d do it.”

“It’s not that ratty,” she mumbles, looking away.

He tightens the hug. “I’m sorry I made you feel like you weren’t good enough. That was never, ever the case. That was all me being stupid and oblivious, it was never about your worth or your… your qualifications, whatever you want to call them. Okay?”

“Okay,” she says, nodding. She finally, finally lets him pull her all the way into his embrace, lets him wrap his arms around her back and squeeze. She tucks her head under his chin and squeezes back, and the tension in her shoulders starts to dissipate. Dampness starts to seep through his sweatshirt, but he doesn’t mind. He just holds on, rocking her gently.

It took fourteen years for her to come into his life, and another six for him to realize where she fit in it. He’s not going to let go.

He squeezes her again and watches the DVD menu cycle through a couple of times, thinking of things he can do for Nat that will make her feel welcome, make her feel like she belongs. He learned about adult adoptions during his last search for Bailey, re-adding his name to state adoption registries across the midwest. If that’s too much, if that’s not something she wants, well. He can find other things, too.

They don’t know when her birthday is. They’ve been celebrating it on the day that they met. That gives him a few months to figure out something amazing.

“The holidays are coming up,” Nat says timidly, a few minutes later. “We should do something.”

“Make some family traditions?” Clint asks, smiling down at her. He runs his hand up and down her spine, gently, and she finally, finally relaxes against him. “I could get behind that. Where do you want to start?”

*

The  conversation with Natasha, although a long time coming and ultimately a very good thing, leaves him more emotionally drained than he’s been in weeks. He’s back to sleeping in late, and when Nat comes by in the evenings for dinner and TV, he finishes half his plate and then lays back down, head in her lap. They watch NCIS, West Wing, and 60 Minutes, and they rotate through most of Clint’s growing DVD collection.

He doesn’t understand what his problem suddenly is. He’s tired of being depressed. He’s tired of being tired. The meds are helping - he knows they are, he can feel it - but he just wants this period of his life to be over so that he can go back to normal.

Things with Nat are squared away, and he’s coming to finally, finally accept what happened with Jackie and Bailey and Barney. Things with Phil are still unresolved, but even despite that, he can see happiness in his future, finally.

He just wishes it would hurry up and get here.

*

Sunday, November 21, 2004

*

Rosita calls him twice, and he sends it to voicemail both times. He’s tired today. He woke up crying from a nightmare of Phil shaking in his arms, and now he just wants to zone out in front of the television and turn off his brain. _Signs_ is playing on USA, and Joaquin Phoenix is just cute enough to keep his attention off his spinning thoughts.

Finally, Rosita sends a text, _How’s therapy going?_

 _fine_ , he eventually sends back.

_Just “fine”?_

_i don’t wanna talk about it_

_Why not?_

All the emotions that have been churning inside of him since he started opening up in therapy - that he’d been trying to quiet down for a few minutes by way of crappy movie - come bubbling up to the surface. _cuz youll judge me_

_What are you talking about?_

So often, the things Rosita tells him sound just like the recriminations his own head supplies. He’s too passive. He takes things too personally. He’s too sensitive. He wants to tell his brain to shut up. But he can’t, so he lashes out at Rosita instead.

_nothing i do is ever good enough for you. your always disappointed in me. im sick of hearing about all the things im doing wrong._

She doesn’t send a reply, not that he expected her to. She’s probably on the phone with Lraaz, who’ll call him in the next day or two to smooth things over between them. She’s done it enough in the past; he knows how it’ll play out. Rosita will never do the dirty work herself.

*

Thursday, November 25, 2004

*

Clint’s finally gotten out of bed for the day, and is laying on the couch watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade. Natasha’s coming by at three with dinner from Boston Market. Phil had always been the one to cook when the three of them were together for a holiday, but Phil isn’t here, and Clint has been in no mood to fail at cooking, much less travel to Chicago for Donna’s potluck. So he and Nat are trying something new. Even if that something happens to be the takeout version of Thanksgiving dinner.

Being ready to start a new family tradition is one thing. Getting up to get the door when it buzzes, light flashing, is somehow harder. The buzzing persists, though, so Clint, still wrapped in his blanket, slowly gets up and heads for the door. He leans against the jamb and opens the door just enough to see who it is.

Standing in the hallway of his shitty apartment building in Boyle Heights, with a trendy purse under one arm and a large gift bag in the other, is Rosita. She meets his eyes and, when he doesn’t say anything, asks tentatively, “Can I come in?”

“Are you going to lecture me on taking things personally?” he asks.

“I’ll try not,” she says. Then she adds, “No guarantees, though.”

Clint sighs and steps back to let her through, because Lraaz will very gently and politely murder him if she learns that he turned Rosita away.

“I figured you’d send Lraaz again,” he says, once he’s back in his nest on the couch.

Rosita moves some of the detritus of his depression - used Kleenex, empty snack food wrappers, a half-empty Gatorade bottle, a single chopstick - and sits down next to him stiffly. “Lraaz is still out on assignment, and Meredith hung up on me when I explained the situation.”

Clint snorts. Yeah. That’s all Meredith.

“I didn’t want to risk one of Donna’s guilt trips,” she continues. “So I came here instead.”

Clint slouches a bit further down into the couch cushion and says, “I’m not apologizing.”

“I am.”

He looks over at her in surprise, and she smiles ruefully. “I had not realized how my behavior was contributing to your issues. I thought I was helping by being honest.”

He tilts his head to the side. “There’s being honest and then there’s being honest.”

“Yes. So Lraaz has said. A number of times. I thought I was helping, and that you were just being obtuse and needed to hear the truth. I did not…” She takes a deep breath, here. “I don’t want you to think that I don’t care about you, or that I don’t support you. I do.”

“You have a shitty way of showing it.”

“I know,” she admits, looking down. “And I’m… sorry.”

He glances over at her. She’s never said those words before.

“That’s why I’m here. To apologize, and to support you, if I can.” She shifts, turning on the couch to face him more fully. “I don’t tell you often enough how proud of you I am, and how much you mean to me. I’m going to try harder to do that. Okay?”

He nods, and his shoulders start to shake. She hands him the tissue box, then turns the television to the National Dog Show. She doesn’t say anything while he cries - that’s not her thing - and he’s thankful.

When he wakes up, the television is off. Natasha and Rosita are at the kitchen table, talking quietly, and the spread from Boston Market is laid out on the counter.

“Hungry?” Nat asks.

He nods. They both stand, and Rosita hands him a plate. He bumps her shoulder with his, and he knows that’s the end of their fight. Their relationship has always been a little bit fraught, a little bit tense. Maybe this is the start of something new.

“You’re not on a mission,” Clint observes once they’ve sat down. “Are you bummed you aren’t spending the holiday with your family?”

“When did you get the idea that you aren’t part of my family?”

He starts, and puts the bowl of gravy down gently on the table. “...Because we’ve gotten into eight fights in the past fourteen years? Nine if you count this one.”

Rosita reaches for the gravy and starts spooning it onto her mashed potatoes. “Fighting is what family does. What makes it family and not a bunch of related people torturing each other is that they do it willingly.”

He raises an eyebrow. “You’re really not selling your case, Rosita.”

“Don’t lie to me, you’re terrible at it,” she deadpans.

It’s so familiar, that tone. He smiles. Then he starts to chuckle. Then he’s laughing - full-out laughing, face in his hands, leaning over practically banging his head on the tabletop. It feels like forever since he’s laughed like this. Since before June, definitely. Maybe even before February.

He’d forgotten laughter could feel like this.

When he finally pulls himself back together and looks up, Rosita is staring primly out into the middle distance, sipping from her glass of  water. Next to him, Nat is smiling a wobbly smile.

“You okay?” he asks her through the last of his chuckles. His stomach is spasming and his cheeks hurt.

“No,” Nat says. “I owe Rosita ten dollars. You couldn’t have waited until tomorrow?”

His smile grows. “Apparently not, kiddo.”

They settle onto the couch together after dinner, nursing their pie and their coffee. Nat scooches in next to him, leaning against his side. Rosita gives him much more space on the other side as she sits, and then she asks, “Are you finally going to take your turn to pick the movie?”

“Just for that, I’m tempted to pick _Stargate_.”

Rosita’s face moves into a complicated expression - her hatred for that movie warring with her desire to be supportive of him - and then she admits, “I deserve that. If that’s what you want to watch…”

“Nah. I won’t subject you to Kurt Russell.”

“Thank you,” Rosita says vehemently.

Nat hands him the remote, and he chooses.

*

It’s after ten when Nat and Rosita leave - Nat to her own place and Rosita to the Marriott, “So that I can pick up a scarf for Lraaz from that shop she likes.”

Once they’re gone, Clint picks up his phone and starts fidgeting with it, rolling it in his palm and tossing it from one hand to the other.

He considers calling Nick to check in, maybe test the waters, put in a good word for him. He considers calling Natasha back over, so that she can support him and tell him what to say, and maybe even shield him from some unknown hurt.

But he doesn’t call either of them. This is his battle. This is something he needs to do by himself, for himself.

He flips open the phone and hits speed dial 3 before he can talk himself out of it.

It rings four times, and then Phil - Phil! - answers, like he’s out of breath, “Clint? Is that you?”

“Hey,” is all Clint can manage to say, and it comes out tight, awkward. All that lead-up and he never thought past hitting the dial button, good job Clint Barton.

“Are you okay?” Phil asks quickly, almost desperately. “Is Tasha okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, we’re okay,” Clint reassures him, and Phil’s sigh of obvious relief is loud enough for Clint to hear clearly over the phone. Small wonder Phil freaked out, getting a phone call out of the blue after not hearing a word from them in five months. “I just called to wish you a happy Thanksgiving.”

Clint wonders if this is it - the moment when the door is shut for good, and he has to learn how to be okay with it. He thinks he will be, knows that with Nat and Rosita and everyone else, he will be. But he doesn’t want to. Because this is Phil.

“Oh,” Phil says faintly. “Clint… You, too. Happy Thanksgiving.”

There’s a beat of silence. Clint considers whether he should make small talk, if he should ask Phil what he had for dinner and who he was with. He decides to cut straight to the point. “Are _you_ okay, Phil? The last time I saw you…”

“I wasn’t okay, back then,” Phil admits, picking up where Clint left off. He lets out a gusty breath and adds, “I spent a couple of weeks in the medical ward at The Hub, afterward, to deal with a few problems.”

Problems Clint wasn’t around to help him through. Clint shuts the guilt down, because there’s nothing he can do about the past. He can only move forward. He asks, “But you’re okay now?”

“I’m a lot better now. No long-term effects, and…” Phil hesitates, and Clint holds his breath. He knows the sound behind Phil’s pauses, and this one is Phil deciding what is and isn’t safe to say. Clint’s never been on the receiving end of one, before, and it hurts.

Finally, Phil says, “And I’m in therapy, the therapist I had when I first joined SHIELD, so that this doesn’t happen again.”

“That’s good,” Clint says. Of course that would be Phil’s main concern - worrying about a repeat performance. Worrying that he might drive them away again, or drive others away. Worrying that the next time might be for good. Clint isn’t the only one with abandonment issues.

“I’m sorry for worrying you,” Phil says, and then his voice breaks. “I’m sorry for a lot of things.”

And no. No more of this, of Phil feeling like he’s ruined everything. No more Phil thinking he’s broken their relationship, because he obviously thinks he has, and that’s wrong. Clint has the power to fix this, he suddenly realizes. All he has to do is speak up.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” Clint says. And because it seems to be the next most important thing, he adds, “I missed you. Rosita and Nat came for dinner and we had Boston Market, and Rosita brought pie. The only problem was that you weren’t there.”

“I’m sorry,” Phil repeats, and Clint has to cut him off this time, has to keep going, has to help Phil understand.

“--It’s okay. I’m not, I’m not mad at you, that’s not what I’m saying.” He says it as gently as he can, because Phil’s obviously spooked. If the words are going to come across right - if they’re going to sink into Phil’s brain and into his heart - Clint has to say it right. “It was just that, it was a family holiday and a family dinner, and you weren’t there.”

There isn’t a sound on the other end of the line. Clint wonders if Phil is holding his breath.

“I want you to be there, Phil, I want you to be a part of my family.”

Because that’s the truth. This is what they are together, and Clint can’t imagine Phil not being a part of it: as his lover or as his friend, it doesn’t really matter. He needs to show Phil that he’s welcome. “Wherever, whatever place you want in it, it’s yours.”

“Clint,” Phil says, and his voice is… well, Clint’s pretty sure that his fear of rejection is now a non-issue. Phil is taking deep breaths, each one a little less even than the last, a little more ragged.

He starts to worry after a moment. “Are you--”

“My mom died this spring,” Phil chokes out, and Clint’s question sticks in his throat. He’s not surprised at the revelation; he’d put together the hints well enough on his own. “That’s why I was gone all the time, why I nearly drank myself to death. I thought… I thought I didn’t have any family left.”

Clint knows that feeling, and it bothers him more than he can express that Phil had to feel it, too.

“You still have us,” he asserts. It’s the truth. “However you want us.”

“Okay,” Phil says. He takes a couple more deep breaths, calmer now. “Okay. Yes. I want that, too.”

Clint smiles, and sinks down onto the couch in relief. “So when are you coming home?”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more chapter to go.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is it.

*

Friday, November 26, 2004

*

Clint’s coming back from the convenience store down the block, and turns the corner in the hallway of his apartment building just in time to see Phil step away from his door. Clint sucks in a breath, and then Phil turns, sees him, and freezes. Clint can definitely sympathize - he’s rooted to the spot, as well.

“Hey,” Phil says, his tone hesitant and awkward.

“Phil?” Clint asks. He doesn’t know how he sounds. He’s shocked at the sight of Phil - looking thinner than he normally is, but still infinitely better than how he looked five months ago, pale and shaking in a hospital bed.

Phil opens his mouth to say something, and then closes it without speaking, and then suddenly they’re hugging.

Clint doesn’t remember moving, doesn’t remember Phil moving, but now they’re standing on the cheap carpeting of the hallway of his apartment building, clinging to each other. Phil digs his fingers into the fabric of Clint’s windbreaker, and gasps into Clint’s shoulder, “I’m so sorry, Clint.”

“Hey,” Clint soothes, rubbing one hand briskly up and down Phil’s back; the other slides through Phil’s hair to cup the back of his head, keep him there, pressed into Clint’s shoulder. “Hey, it’s okay. It’s okay.”

They stand there until the elevator dings and one of Clint’s neighbors steps out. They draw apart slowly, but not completely; Clint keeps an arm around Phil as he unlocks the door to his apartment and eases them both inside.

“What are you doing here?” Clint asks, not beating around the bush or pretending that Phil was anywhere other than rehab. “I only called you, like, yesterday. Did you hop the next flight or something?”

“You _called_ me,” Phil replies. “Of course I came.”

“Oh,” Clint says. Is that… is that really all it took? A call?

“I missed you,” Clint says simply. This is where the chips fall, this is where he stands, this is every idiom in the English language that comes down to three simple facts: he loves Phil, Phil is his friend, and he missed him.

“I missed you, too,” Phil says back, his eyes shining. He huffs out a short laugh. “I missed you _a lot_. It was awful without you and Nat with me.”

It’s as good an opening as any other. He gestures Phil to sit on the couch, joins him, and says, “It seems like things were pretty awful for you even when me and Nat _were_ with you.”

Phil looks down and nods his head.

“Do you want me to call Nat and have her come over here?”

At Phil’s nod, he pulls his phone out of the pocket of his windbreaker and hits speed dial 3. It rings four times, and then Natasha says, “Habari ya mchana!”

“Tasha,” Clint says softly. “Phil’s here.”

There’s a short pause, then, “Sit on him till I get there.”

The call cuts off, and Clint glances back up at Phil, who’s still looking at him with concern and open care. Clint’s been on the receiving end of these looks before, but this one feels different. New. He feels himself smile. Because Phil is back. Somehow, Phil is back. They have a lot to talk about and work through, but Phil’s here, Phil found him, Phil isn’t angry, Phil is sorry, Phil missed him…

Clint’s been talking a _lot_ the past few months; he’s ready, now, to listen.

*

Clint doesn’t hear his front door open. He just happens to look up from the cushion where his hand is resting in Phil’s, and Natasha is standing there in the entryway, staring at Phil like she was afraid she’d never see him again. Clint suddenly realizes that he doesn’t know if Natasha visited Phil in the ICU - or if this is the first time she’s set eyes on him since she turned away from him in the woods.

The vulnerability etched clear across her face as she stares makes Clint think back to when she was fifteen - new at SHIELD and terrified. She’s nineteen now, practically a SHIELD veteran now, but…

“You’re back,” Nat says, trying to make her voice flat, but not quite succeeding. Clint feels the beginnings of worry start to curl in his stomach at the way she says those two words.

“Yes,” Phil replies gently, his hesitancy obvious. “Clint called me last night, so I flew out this morning.”

Her glance skitters to Clint, then back to Phil again. She continues, losing her calm with every word, “Clint called you, so you came? Five and a half months you’ve been gone, and now you’re just-- here?”

Phil flinches. “Nat, I’m sorry it took me--”

“You’re sorry?” she asks, anger clear in her voice and in her eyes. “Are you really? You were rid of us. You were happy to be rid of us.”

“I _am_ sorry--”

“No you’re not!” she shouts, and Clint’s stomach drops. Nat’s never blown up like this before in the time he’s known her, and she has never, _ever_ spoken that way to Phil. Phil, who she idolizes, who she looks to for guidance, who… clearly hasn’t reached out to her since June. “You left us! You obviously don’t need us, you obviously don’t care about us, you’re only here because you feel guilty.”

“I’m not-- _Tasha_ , of course I--” Phil leans forward, reaching for Nat’s hand. She pulls it away before he can reach her and backs up several steps.

“Don’t!” She gasps, clutching her hand to her chest. “Don’t talk to me like you care when you hate me!”

Phil’s expression breaks. Nat sees it, and her face shifts - from anger, to shock, to terror. She takes another step back towards the door, and it’s clear she’s about to bolt. Clint doesn’t know what will happen if she does.

“Hey,” Clint says gently, spreading his hands wide and not making any other moves toward her. “Hey kiddo, it’s okay.”

She shakes her head, and her voice is choked when she says, “No, it’s not.”

She’s out the door and down the hall before Clint can blink. By the time he comes to his senses and leaps after her, she’s already down the stairs (or into the vents or jumping through someone’s window, who knows?). He hits street level and knows she’s gone.

When he trudges back up the stairs and into the open door of his apartment, he finds Phil sitting on the couch, staring blankly at the coffee table.  

“She’s gone,” Clint says.

“I made a mistake,” Phil replies, shoulders slumping. “I waited too long. I thought I was giving you both space. Maybe if I’d come back sooner, she wouldn’t have time to hate me.”

“She doesn’t hate you,” Clint says, confident that he’s right. “She’s upset. You just need to talk to her.”

Phil raises his eyes and just looks at him, face drawn.

“Did you drive here?” Clint asks. Phil blinks, and then nods. “Come on. Let’s go find her.”

*

“Turn left at the next light,” Clint says. “There’s construction on 4th, it’s been mucking everything up.”

“Got it,” Phil says, and goes back into the silence he’s been harboring since they left the apartment.

“She’s nineteen,” Clint says after the next turn. “She’s had a tough couple months. She was bound to freak out about something - you can’t take it personal. Right at the stoplight.”

“You think she went back to base?” Phil asks. “She could be in another time zone by now if she wanted.”

“She’s upset. She’ll go somewhere she feels safe. It’s worth a shot,” Clint replies.

They drive in silence for a while.

“Can I ask you a question about something?” Phil asks, obviously trying to distract himself from their current predicament.

“Sure,” Clint says.

“I spent a lot of time asking Nick for updates on how you were,” he confesses, shoulders tight as he drives. “I know you’re on medical leave right now. But he wouldn’t tell me why.”

“Oh,” Clint says. Well. He’s not upset with Nick for giving those details, and he’s not ashamed, now, to share the whole story. And it warms him to know he was in Phil’s thoughts just as much as Phil was in his. “I had a depressive episode in September. I asked for help, and Nick put me on leave to recover, go to therapy, all that.”

It’s amazing how easy it is to say those words, now. To understand what they mean, how they explain how he feels - how he’s felt, so many times before - and to give that freely to someone else.

Phil frowns. “September? Not… not June?”

Jesus, Phil thinks this is his fault. “No, it didn’t -- June sucked, but it didn’t get bad until September. Natasha was the one who pointed out to me that I’d been in bed for a week. So I called Nick, told him what was going on. I’ve been in therapy. It’s been good.”

“Oh,” Phil says. “If I say that’s good, would that imply…?”

“Nah, you’re fine. I wasn’t alright, before. But I’m a lot better now.” He places his hand on Phil’s elbow, just for a moment. Phil glances over at him briefly before training his eyes back on the road. “None of this is your fault, Phil. I’m glad you’re back. And Natasha will be glad, too.”

“I hope so,” is all Phil says, and then merges onto the freeway.

*

Nat isn’t in her quarters at base, or in the gym, or in her cubicle in the office block, or in Clint’s cubicle, or at any of her other favorite places, and she’s not answering her phone.

Clint calls Agent Jelimo, who says, “I’m in Miami. If she comes here, I’ll call you. But only if she lets me.”

Clint calls Maria, who says, “I’ve just gotten off a sixteen-hour shift, no, I haven’t seen her. What did you do?”

In desperation, Clint even calls Rosita. “What’s going on?” she asks.

“I’ll tell you about it later. Call me if she shows up, yeah?”

“I will,” she promises, and immediately follows it up with, “Stop freaking out. It’s not helping anything.”

“I’m trying,” he says. “But I’ve never seen her this upset.”

“That’s why you have to be the calm one. Channel your inner Lraaz,” she replies, and hangs up.

He and Phil head back to the car, and have just gotten in and are casting around for other places Natasha may have gone when his phone finally rings with a blocked number. He flips it open and asks, “Nat?”

“Not even close,” Nick says.

Clint covers his face with his free hand and groans. “Nick. Sorry. Hi.”

“You are interrupting my Black Friday shopping with your drama,” Nick states baldly, which is hilarious because there’s absolutely no way Nick would be caught dead in a big box store unless he needed to build makeshift weaponry on the fly. “Go home. Relax.”

“I know, I’m just worried--”

“Coulson there with you?”

Clint glances over at Phil, who is obviously listening in, if the frown is any indication. “Yeah.”

“Both of you, go home and relax.” There’s a pause, while he waits for Clint to make another objection, and then he adds, “I can make that an order, if you like.”

“We’re going,” Clint says, and nods at Phil, who starts the car.

*

Of course, Natasha is waiting for them in the living room of Clint’s apartment when they walk in. She’s tucked into a corner of the sectional, hugging one of the new throw pillows, but she’s calmed down enough now to be able to arch a single eyebrow and say, a bit shaky, “You guys took forever.”

Clint shrugs and says, “We were out working on our undercover identities as worried parents. How’d we do?”

Nat lets go of the pillow long enough to make a “so-so” gesture with her hand.

Clint shakes his head, and nudges Phil. “The Russian judge is always way too harsh.”

Phil doesn’t respond, and Clint turns to see Phil staring at Nat with that same broken look on his face as earlier - when Nat was trembling and shouting and angry as hell. Now, Nat is avoiding his gaze, picking at the loose threads of the pillow in front of her.

She looks terribly young - like a teenager who just told her parents she hates them for the very first time, and has been dreading the repercussions for the past three hours. Clint never had to go through that, but he’s seen movies and heard others talk about the fear of utter rejection that follows saying those words. After the upheaval of the last few months, she must feel completely adrift.

“Natasha,” Clint says, all joking aside. It’s time to repair this - carefully - and he thinks now, maybe, he has the skills to do it. He starts out with, “Can me and Phil come and sit down and talk to you?”

Natasha nods after a moment. Phil doesn’t move until he sees Clint nod as well, and then he steps over to the couch and sits down, leaving a good two feet of space between him and Nat.

Clint sits at Nat’s other side, right up next to her like normal. She doesn’t lean into him the way she usually does, so he leaves his arm down and doesn’t pull her to him; much as he wants to hug her, respecting her space is more important. He asks, “Are you mad at Phil?”

Nat’s shoulders tense up, and she nods minutely, back to squeezing the pillow. She hasn’t gone this non-verbal in years, but at least she’s in the room. She’s responding. Clint can work with this. He asks, “Are you mad at yourself because you yelled at Phil?”

Another pause, and then another nod. She doesn’t look up at either of them, just sets her jaw and stares at the coffee table.

“Are you scared he’s mad at you for yelling at him?”

Her grip on the pillow tightens. Clint gives it a few seconds, and adds, “Are you scared he’s mad at you for other stuff?”

Nat shrugs, lifting one delicate shoulder before curling back into herself.

Clint chews on this non-response for a moment, considering, and then asks, “Are you scared he’s been gone all this time because he’s angry you left him in the woods to get help?”

Nat’s head shoots up and her eyes go wide. Clint takes this as a solid yes. He leans forward a bit and says, as gently as he can manage, “Phil’s not mad at you, kiddo. He knows you did the right thing. He’s mad at himself for hurting you, and for not talking to you about what happened. Right, Phil?”

Phil finds his voice, now, and it comes out absolutely certain. “I’m not mad, Tasha. There is absolutely no reason for me to be upset with you. You did everything right, every step of the way. Everything that happened was my fault - I was sick, and I made all the wrong calls, and that put us in danger. You’re the one who saved me. You did the right thing.”

Natasha just looks at him, eyes wide, and Phil adds, “You, however, have every right to be angry at me. I hid things from you, put us all in danger, and then instead of talking to you about it, I hid for six months, ashamed. I can’t begin to tell you how sorry I am. You both should be furious with me.”

She finally breaks her silence and replies, voice timid, “I don’t want to be. I just want to be…”

“Happy to see him?” Clint guesses. “Relieved he’s okay?”

“It’s all tangled up together,” Nat admits.

“Happy? Scared? Angry? Kinda like you want to throw up?” She gives him a nod. “Please don’t throw up on the couch, Nat, that’s your inheritance.”

She snorts, and Clint’s shoulders release a little more. Getting her to laugh is always a good sign.

“Is it okay if Phil gives you a hug?” he asks.

Natasha glances over at Phil, who raises his arms. She launches herself into them, and he wraps her up tight, whispering things Clint can’t quite make out. Nat mumbles something back and presses deeper into the embrace.

Clint sighs, watching them and feeling the pieces of his world fit a bit more closely together. They don’t notice when he stands, so he steps quietly into the kitchen to give them their space.

He pulls out his phone and texts Rosita. _we’re u gonna come over? only phil is here & nat & emotions are happening. mite not be a good idea _

Rosita replies immediately. _This hotel has SWAT on Pay-Per-View. Colin Farrell and I will be fine._

_Thx_ , he writes back, and puts his phone away.

After a few minutes - and some finagling with the microwave and the Thanksgiving leftovers - he leans into the doorway to the living room and says, “Food’s up!”

Phil and Nat draw apart slowly, and when they come to the table, Nat sits on Phil’s side, chair pulled in close.

After a quiet dinner, punctuated by a few comments on the food and offers of water refills, the three of them move back into the living room. Phil sits on the far end of the couch with his back straight and his hands clasped, and Clint knows that now it’s time for Phil to have his say. Clint and Natasha plop down next to him.

Phil takes a deep breath and lets it out gently, and begins, “I owe you both an apology, and an explanation. It doesn’t excuse what happened, but I hope it will… help make sense out of the situation. But the fault was mine, and I want you both to know how very sorry I am about what happened, and about not… being open with either of you about a lot of things. I’m… trying to not do that, now.”

After a pause, Clint says, “Okay.”

Phil looks down at his hands, and doesn’t look up when he starts speaking. “There’s really not a lot to the story. It’s not that complicated. I wasn’t on a mission. I was flying home on the weekends because my mom was dying. She had Alzheimer’s. She didn’t tell me for a long time, not until it was too obvious to hide anymore.”

Phil told him this last night, but this is Nat’s first time hearing it. She’s stiffened next to him, and Clint fills the moment of silence with, “I’m sorry. About your mom.”

Phil shakes his head, and just continues like Clint never said anything. “The last couple months were bad. I had to go home a lot more to help deal with things. Sort out the medical stuff. Get her settled into hospice. Clear out the house and get it ready to sell. I had some help - her doctor and her social worker - but for the most part I was doing it alone. And so I would so that all day, and get home at night, and sit on her couch, and go through her things, and…”

Phil’s breath catches. “I emptied her liquor cabinet. And then I refilled it. And then I emptied it again. She died on the 28th of April. I arranged the funeral. I met with the lawyer to execute her will. I finished clearing out the house and passed it over to the realtor. And then I came back to work, but I was still... I really didn’t realize the drinking had gotten that bad, until we got lost in the woods.”

“You weren’t alone, Phil,” Clint says, and Natasha nods along with him. “You didn’t have to be. Nat and I would have been there, if you’d told us what was going on.”

Phil shakes his head. “I couldn’t talk about it. I’ve never been able to, I’ve always coped by just holding it in, and it always worked well enough before. With something this big? I just couldn’t.”

“You’re talking about it now,” Natasha says. “Did you talk about while you were--”

“--In super secret spy rehab?” Clint interrupts.

That surprises a laugh out of Phil. “Is that what we’re calling it?”

Natasha says, “No, we’re not calling it that,” and at the same time Clint says, “We are definitely calling it that.”

“I will fight you, Barton,” Natasha threatens, a little wobbly, but getting closer to their normal patter.

“And you will win, Romanov,” Clint replies.

Phil sighs, but it’s not nearly as heavy as the last few. “I missed you two.”

Nat frowns. “Why did you go?”

Phil nods. “After we were rescued, I was transferred to The Hub the day after I stabilized, to get more intensive treatment. And because my former therapist, Andrew, was stationed there. I wish I could have stayed here, but the doctors thought I’d open up more with someone I already had a rapport with.”

“Did you?” Nat asks.

Phil nods again, and shifts to wrap an arm around Nat’s shoulders. Reassuring them both. “One hour a day, three days a week, to start off. Detoxing… isn’t fun.”

“Neither is bereavement,” Clint adds gently. “It’s okay that you were depressed, Phil. We’re not gonna judge you for it. We’re the last people who’d judge you for it.”

Phil sends him a warm look. “I know. But it’s hard to remember that when you’re in the thick of it. And I was very depressed.”

“But Andrew helped you?” Nat asks, voice quiet, and the hope he hears makes Clint ache.

Phil must hear it, too, because he visibly tightens his hold on her and replies, “Yes, I had a lot of help. Andrew, a few friends on base, an online support group for children of Alzheimer’s patients… it took a couple of months for me to find an antidepressant that didn’t make me nauseous, but this one appears to be working.”

Phil turns his head to look straight into Clint’s eyes, and adds, “And there’s another medicine I’m taking, it’s called naltrexone. It prevents you from… craving alcohol, I guess. If you start to drink, it makes you want to stop.”

Clint swallows. “I… didn’t know they made anything like that,” he admits.

“They do. And I’m taking it. I’m…” The calm facade he’s been wearing for the past few minutes - that he probably put on to be able to talk about these things - finally cracks. “I’m so sorry, both of you. I never meant for my problems to end up hurting you, never.”

“Phil,” Clint says, leaning closer. “You’re human. You’re going to have problems. Tell us about them next time, and we can help you. We’re not going to go anywhere. We’re family.”

Phil stares at Clint like he’s seeing him for the first time, and Clint just looks back steadily, because he’s said nothing but the truth. Then Phil shifts his gaze to Natasha, who nods, and his shoulders visibly ease. Clint watches them, and feels complete.

“Family,” Phil echoes back.

Nat smiles and takes Phil’s hand in her own. “Family.”

Clint reaches across Nat to take Phil’s other hand and complete the circle. “Family.”

There’s a few moment’s pause where they all just look at each other, wobbly smiles all around. Phil looks wrung out and exhausted. Natasha looks less worried than she has been the last few months, but it’s still not all the way gone. Clint figures that’s enough of a deep and meaningful today, and asks, “Movie?”

Natasha perks up. “ _Die Hard?_ ”

That makes Phil smile, which makes Clint smile.

*

Saturday, November 27, 2004

*

Rosita comes over at lunchtime with empanadas and the three different scarves she bought the day before, and demands Clint’s help in figuring out which one to give to Lraaz.

“I like the green one,” Clint says, fingering the silk fabric where it’s pooled in his lap. Rosita has the other two strewn across the couch cushion between them. They’re all gorgeous, and they’re all expensive, and honestly Clint thinks Rosita might be trying too hard, in her own bullish way. “Does she still have that white tunic top with the green beaded leaves on it? It would go well with that one.”

“No, she threw that one out last year, it got torn while she was on the subway. She was kind of upset.”

“Not as upset as you were, I’m guessing,” Clint muses. “Why do you have to choose? Why don’t you just give her all three?”

“She’ll say I spent too much, and we’ll have an argument instead of the other thing.”

“You guys regularly shell out a thousand bucks for plane tickets to and from Paris, but three fifty-dollar scarves are going to be the final straw?” Clint asks, picking up the second scarf to rub on his cheek. It’s soft; he is scruffy. He puts it down.

“These are the perils of a bi-continental relationship,” Rosita responds. “Pick one.”

Clint huffs and points to each scarf in turn. “Give her this one as a belated Eid gift. Give her this one at Christmas. And mail her this one in the middle of January for no reason at all. She’ll like that.”

Rosita frowns down at the multicolored fabric, and then nods. “Alright. If you insist. But I’m blaming you if it goes wrong.”

Clint shrugs. “That’s fine. I’m just glad to hear she’s wearing them again. She didn’t, for a while.”

“No, she didn’t,” Rosita agrees quietly. She carefully folds up all three scarves and puts them back in the gift bag in the order Clint indicated.

They settle into the couch with their lemonades and dig into the DVR, finally agreeing on episodes from “Shark Week” back in July, which Clint has been holding onto on the off chance Rosita were to stop by. It’s mid-afternoon when the door buzzes and the light flashes, and when Clint yells, “It’s open!”, Phil opens the door and walks in.

Clint feels his stomach jump a little bit, having Phil in his space again, even though they said goodnight just fifteen hours ago. He figures it’s something that’s going to keep on happening for a while - until he believes that Phil really is back. “Hey,” he says. “Come on in. We’re just watching Shark Week.”

“Now _you’re_ watching Shark Week,” Rosita says, standing and gathering up her things. “I’m all out of patience for deep and meaningful conversations.”

“We’re not having a--” Clint begins.

“Thanks, Rosita,” Phil says. “Sorry to interrupt your TV time.”

“It’s fine,” Rosita replies. She turns to Clint and says, “ _Don’t_ delete the rest. I’ll watch them next time I visit.”

Then she turns to Phil and says, “I have a shovel.”

“Noted,” Phil replies with a nod, a bemused smile on his face.

Confused, and not sure he wants to even know, Clint walks Rosita to the door. “Sorry you had to deal with all my drama this week.”

“It’s what family does,” she says plainly. “Next time call one of us _before_ you spend a week on your couch. I’ll see you at New Year’s.”

“Alright,” Clint says. Then he adds, “Love you.”

Rosita doesn’t say anything, just rolls her eyes. Then she raises her hand, folding down her middle and ring fingers while extending the others, and then she’s out the door and down the hall.

Clint smiles, and closes the door.

He goes back into the living room, where Phil is standing idly by the bookshelf, looking at the framed photo of Clint’s parents. The photo he searched for and gave to Clint just to make him happy. He’s dressed in dark jeans and a sweater, an older one that Clint has probably fallen asleep on half a dozen times during movie nights on this couch. Clint just drinks him in. He fits in this room, in this space, the way those stupid throw pillows never have. “Hey,” Clint says again, at a loss for any other words.

Phil turns and smiles, blue eyes shining. “Hey.”

Clint crosses the room and hugs him.

“Oh,” Phil says, a faint sound of surprise, and immediately hugs back. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” Clint says, because he is. “Just… wanted the hug.”

Phil’s arms tighten for a moment, and then gradually, they let go of each other. Phil is still smiling, and when he’s pulled far enough away for Clint to see his lips clearly, he says, “I wanted to talk to you, about that. If that’s okay.”

Clint stiffens and goes to take a step back; Phil grips his biceps firmly and says, “I’m not stopping the hugs, I just need to know something.”

“What is it?” Clint asks, suspicious about where this conversation is going and not sure he’s ready for it. Not sure he’s ready for that particular let-down.

Phil pulls him over to the couch and has them both sit down, because he is an adult who likes to be comfortable when talking about…. things, rather than standing in a random corner of the living room. Phil takes a deep breath. “When you called me the other night, you told me that whatever place I wanted in your family, I could have. I would like to clarify what you meant by that.”

Clint’s mind whites out. Everything he thinks, wants, feels, wishes for in the deepest corner of his heart - it all flies out of his mind, and all he can do is sit there and gape at Phil in his soft sweater and soft smile.

After a few moments watching Clint sit there with his mouth open, Phil says, “Let me make this easier for you. Would it be out of line for me to kiss you right now?”

Clint’s jaw drops further, and the ability to speak English is completely erased from his brain, so when Phil’s eyes start to shift from hopeful to wary, Clint decides to screw figuring out words, and leans forward to initiate that promised kiss.

Phil kisses back, and his lips are soft like his sweater and sweet like honey and Clint thinks he might cry if this lasts very much longer.

They pull apart slowly, and then Phil meets his eyes and says, “I love you.”

Clint’s breath catches, and feels reality reassert itself into his sun-drenched living room. It’s everything he wants, but… Phil has been hurt and in therapy and isolated for the past five months, and if there’s a chance he’s saying these things because he thinks it’s the only way to get Clint to keep him, that isn’t healthy. For either of them.

“This is…. Kind of sudden,” Clint replies, swallowing down any other response he could make. “It’s not that I’m -- it’s not that I don’t -- it’s just--”

“We’ve never talked about this,” Phil finishes for him. “So you didn’t know.”

“Yeah,” Clint says. “That.”

“I’m not good at talking about my feelings,” Phil admits, and smiles a little when Clint lets out a snort. Clint doesn’t pull any further out of their embrace, and Phil seems to take that as a sign to continue. “That doesn’t mean I don’t have them. I’ve had a lot of feelings about you for a long time.”

Clint has a pretty good idea of what that’s like. Knows how terrifying it is to reach out and open yourself up to rejection. He doesn’t want Phil to feel like that. But he also has to know, “Why now? If you felt this way for so long, why tell me now, when things are, when things have been--?”

Phil smiles grimly, just for a moment, and says, “Before, I dealt with things by bottling them up or drinking them away, and as a consequence, it nearly killed me. I was working on that in therapy, and I realized I was bottling my positive emotions at the same time, and what might the consequences of that be?”

“Nick called you an emotional dumpster fire.”

Phil shakes his head. “He’s not wrong. I kept telling myself it was better for you that I not say anything, that I was too similar to men who had hurt you in the past for you to feel comfortable being with me. And I was too arrogant to realize I was taking that decision away from you.”

“You’ve never hurt me, Phil,” Clint says, gripping his hand hard. “You’re-- I’ve never looked at you and seen anyone but you.”

Phil colors, looking down at their clasped hands and squeezing back. “I’m-- I know. And I’m glad.”

He takes a deep breath and lifts his head back up to look Clint in the eye. “But I think I held onto that fiction because then I didn’t have to examine what it would mean to be with you. Then I didn’t have to think about why I haven’t dated men in years, why I haven’t ever tried for something serious with anyone. Being with you would mean having to face that. So even though I wanted to ask, for _years_ , I held it in, instead.”

Understandable, Clint figures, given Phil’s history, getting thrown out of ROTC at seventeen because he liked another boy a bit too obviously. “Until now?”

Phil’s grip on his hand tightens, and his face goes grim. “I spent months lying to you. I blew our last mission. Then I blew up at you. I thought I had broken everything - your trust, our friendship. Then, the other night, you _called_ me.” A pause, a deep breath. “So yes, I’m telling you this now because... I don’t want to spend any more of my life not telling you things that are important. And you’re important.”

Clint swallows down a lump in his throat and looks away. It’s almost too much, hearing this, after however many years of staring at Phil, wanting to get closer - but not too close. For so many reasons. Maybe Phil’s right. Maybe they weren’t ready before. Maybe now they are.

“How long…” He coughs, because Phil had said years, and-- “How long have you felt like this?”

Phil gives him a rueful smile. “Honestly? First moment I saw you.”

“When I was about to get fired for bringing Nat in?” Clint asks. “Treason charges turn you on?”

Phil shakes his head. “One of my first missions out of Ops was to check out potential new recruits, and your performance at the Cleveland gun club had gotten SHIELD’s attention. You spotted May and me almost immediately, and were so irritated about it you split an arrow with another arrow, and then split _that_ one. You were... magnificent.”

“Thanks,” Clint says, because Lraaz is always haranguing him about accepting compliments properly. “I… I mean... You’re sure?”

“If it helps, I did call Andrew yesterday and asked him to be my emotional alibi,” Phil admits, smile going a bit wry, and Clint can only imagine how that conversation went.

“Yeah? What did he say?”

“That no matter how it ends up, the important part was reaching out.”

Clint smiles. “You know what’s funny? My therapist has been telling me the exact same thing.”

Phil’s face and tone go serious. “It’s up to you. If you decide you want to do this, if you decide you want more.... I got the impression you might, but. You should know I’m coming into this with a lot of baggage, and there might be some things I’m not so great at. If that’s not -- I’ll still come home even if--”

Clint grabs a handful of that soft sweater and pulls Phil in for another kiss, to shut him up, to say the words he can’t quite manage yet.

“Is that at yes?” Phil asks a few minutes later, pulling away to catch his breath. His voice is low and rough, and Clint marvels at it.

“It’s a yes,” Clint replies, smoothing his hands down Phil’s chest, and that sweater. “It’ll give me and my therapist something new to talk about.”

*

Thursday, December 2, 2004

*

“-- And then we talked some more, and then he had to fly back to the Hub. He said he had to get the final okay from his doctors before he could come back to LA for good.”

“How do you feel about that?” Virginia asks. Her cardigan has applique snowflakes on it. Current midday temperature is 74 degrees Fahrenheit. Clint kind of loves that his therapist’s wardrobe doesn’t bow down in the face of LA’s climate.

Shrug. “On the one hand, I trust him. On the other, my brain keeps telling me he breezed into town and made his confession and then left, and he could just… change his mind and decide not to come back. I know he’s going to come back. I _know_ he is. But. I can hear my brain telling me it’s all going to be ruined.”

“What’s your evidence?”

“That he’s gone forever? There isn’t any, really.”

“And what’s your evidence that he means what he says?”

“He promised when he left that it was only temporary. And he’s, he’s called me every night since. We’ve talked every night. And every night he says he’s coming back. The doctors wanted one last blood test to check his kidneys, and his therapist wants to adjust his dosage and make sure there aren’t any major side effects, and then he’s coming home. That’s what he says.”

“So when you have doubts, when you start feeling insecure about any of this - not just his timeline, but his thoughts, his feelings for you - remember to look for the evidence. And you can always ask him.”

“You mean like, ‘Hey Phil, remind me that you like me, because I keep forgetting’?”

“It gives him the opportunity to reassure you - and it also can serve to reassure him that your feelings haven’t changed, either, in his absence.”

Right. Phil confessed his feelings so eloquently, and all Clint could do was awkwardly agree, and now Phil is a thousand miles away again. “So… You’re saying he’s probably feeling the same way I do, and if I talk to him about it, then we’ll both feel better.”

She nods, but he just has to ask, one more time, “It won’t bother him?”

Virginia smiles. “No, it won’t bother him at all.”

*

Friday, December 3, 2004

*

_i miss  you_ , Clint types out on his phone. He stares at the text, his thumb hesitating over the send button before finally pressing it. It’s not precisely what he wants to say to Phil. “Miss” isn’t the right word, despite its accuracy. But he hasn’t said the other one to Phil yet, doesn’t want the first time to be a random unsolicited text message at five in the afternoon, when he’d sat down on the couch after putting groceries away and didn’t know what to do with himself next.

_I miss you, too. You okay?_ Phil’s reply comes almost immediately.

Clint doesn’t know the answer to that question, doesn’t want to worry Phil, doesn’t want to bother him, doesn’t know _how to do this_. Part of him is glad Phil isn’t here in person right now and able to see right through him. Their feelings are out in the open, now, and happy as he is about it, there are moments where he feels so vulnerable, so exposed, that all he wants to do is hide. It’s easier to hide when Phil can’t look into his eyes and _know_.

_weird headspace today_ , he finally sends back.

Another fast response from Phil: _Anything I can do?_

Clint chews his lip, grabs onto his courage with both hands, and types, _reassure me?_

Phil’s next message takes longer to come through, but when it does, it reads: _You are the most tender, caring, amazing person I have ever known, and I can’t wait to have you in my arms again._

Wow.

As love notes go, that’s definitely the best one Clint has ever gotten. Or witnessed. Or heard about existing. And all he had to do was ask.

_me, too,_ he finally sends back, feeling hopelessly bland in comparison to that one-sentence sonnet. _call me tonight?_

_I will_ , Phil replies. _I love you_.

“Yeah,” Clint murmurs. He puts the phone down and wipes his eyes.

*

Sunday, December 6, 2004

*

“Hey,” Clint says when Phil answers the phone.

“Hey,” Phil says. “How was your night?”

“Me and Nat went to see _National Treasure_.”

“Yeah?” Phil says, voice perking with interest because he is a giant, giant nerd. “I wanted to go, but Melinda refused to go with me because she hates Nicolas Cage. How was it?”

“Uhhh….”

“That bad?”

Clint winces. “You know how you hate historical inaccuracy in movies?”

“Oh god…”

*

Monday, December 13, 2004

*

They go to say good night, same as every night for the past 16 days. And the same as every other night, Phil ends with, “I love you. Good night.”

“Yeah. Good night,” Clint says,

It’s not what he wants to say.

*

Tuesday, December 14, 2004

*

“I love you, Phil,” Clint says, coming out of the shower in the morning.

“I’m in love with you,” Clint says, locking his apartment door behind him.

“Phil, I love you,” Clint says, kicking off his sneakers and flopping down on the couch at the end of the day.

“Hey,” Phil says when he calls that night. “How was your day?”

“It was good,” he says, curling up on the couch with one of his throw pillows. “I went running with Nat and Maria, and tagged along with them for lunch at that Ethiopian restaurant on Fairfax Ave. Nat’s been on a kick ever since she started canoodling with Agent Jelimo.”

“Canoodling?”

“Yes, I know I’m not a Golden Girl.”

Phil laughs at that, and Clint’s heart surges. “Phil, I…”

“Yeah?” Phil asks, when he trails off.

“I… I wanted to tell you, to tell you that, to say...” Clint huffs with annoyance and gives up before he can make more of a fool of himself. “Dammit, I even practiced. Never mind.”

“Clint,” Phil says, and he doesn’t laugh. “Did you spend all of today practicing telling me you love me?”

Phil Coulson is too damn perceptive.

“Kind of,” Clint admits. “I don’t -- I want-- I do, I just--”

Phil shushes him gently. “It’s okay. Clint, we didn’t talk for nearly six months, and then we kissed once, and then we had to be apart again. We’ve been talking a lot and we have plans, but you certainly aren’t expected to say that, yet.”

“It was more than one kiss,” Clint says, feigning offense, because that’s the only flaw that he can find in Phil’s logic.

“Mutual feelings and three hours of kissing on your couch is a good start. I don’t want you to have anxiety about saying something you can’t say yet. You don’t ever have to say it. I know how you feel about me.”

“Yeah?” Clint asks. “You know that?”

“Oh yeah. I definitely know,” Phil replies, and the confidence in his voice makes Clint smile.

*

Thursday, December 16, 2004

*

After his nightly call with Phil, Clint sends another text message.

_MEREDITH_

_Yes?_ , Meredith texts him back a few minutes later.

_u dated phil??_

_“Dated” is such a strong word_ , she replies.

Clint snorts. It’s no fun teasing Meredith if she’s just gonna own everything.

It buzzes again. _You tell him about our sex adventure?_

_yeah_ , he writes back. That had been an… awkward conversation. But it ended the same as every other time: with an “I love you.”

_Is he going to be weird about it?_

_i dont think so_

_Damn,_ she says. _Means I’ll have to find something else to tease him about at the New Year’s party._

Clint shakes his head and puts the phone down. Meredith.

*

Saturday, December 18, 2004

*

Phil’s wearing another one of those impossible sweaters when he steps out of the gate at LAX and heads toward where Clint and Natasha are waiting. Clint can’t wait to get his hands all over it - later, tonight, when they’re not in public - and he bounces lightly on his toes in anticipation as Phil approaches.

He knows Phil’s history, understands Phil’s reticence, so he keeps his hands and lips to himself when Phil reaches them. They’re a thing, they’re a sure thing now, they’ve talked about it, he doesn’t need a public display--

Phil leans forward and kisses Clint on the mouth, easy as you please, not a care in the world, and Clint is still gaping even as Phil turns and wraps Nat in a hug. “Hey, Tasha.”

Nat smirks at Clint over Phil’s shoulder, and as they draw apart, she observes, “I think you broke him.”

Phil turns to Clint again and raises a single eyebrow. “Okay there, Barton?”

“I’m good, I’m great, I’m awesome, do that again,” Clint manages to reply, even as he loops an arm around Phil’s waist and kisses him again. This time it’s long enough for him to appreciate and participate.

This time when they pull back, Nat is glaring at someone behind them, and Clint doesn’t even care, because Phil is grinning. Phil is _back_.

“So what’s the plan for the day?” Phil asks as the three of them head for the exit to the parking lot.

“I was thinking about Christmas,” Clint begins. “It’s next weekend, and now that you’re home, we could do. Uh. Family Christmas things. Together.”

Phil doesn’t answer for a moment, and when Clint turns to look at him, Phil’s got that look on his face, the one from the very first time they kissed, three or so weeks ago. Phil finally clears his throat and says, “That sounds great. You in, Tasha?”

Nat smiles a little bit from Phil’s other side and says, “Those pop-up Christmas tree stands still have a few trees left.”

Phil nods. “Sounds like we have the beginnings of a plan, then.”

Clint grins. “Awesome.”

*

The vacant lot that gets filled with winter foliage every year from Thanksgiving to Christmas is packed with people all pursuing the same goal. They let Natasha take the lead, slipping through gaps between shoppers and stepping around trees to inspect each one for size, shape, build, and “I’ll know it when I see it.” Clint and Phil follow more sedately, hand in hand, content to let her peruse the stock. They’re in LA proper now, and unlike Natasha’s new enemy number one at the airport, no one here cares how closely they walk.

“You’re surprised I kissed you in public,” Phil states.

Clint shrugs. “Little bit.”

“I won’t do it if it makes you uncomfortable,” Phil assures him, like Clint’s the one who has a problem. “It doesn’t matter to me if we’re public or not.”

“I thought you were the one who might be bothered,” Clint responds. “I don’t mind. I liked it. I guess I just thought - with your past - you might not want to… open yourself up like that, I guess. I wasn’t gonna go all PDA on you if it was going to freak you out.”

Phil nods, and squeezes his hand tighter for a second. “I see why you thought that, and thank you for being considerate. It’s just that, I want you to know that you’re loved, and I don’t care who else knows it. Not anymore.”

Clint feels the blush spread across his face and down his neck. He doesn’t think he’ll ever get used to hearing those words from Phil. “Me, too,” he finally manage to eke out. “All of it.”

Phil does that smile again.

Clint doesn’t think he’ll ever get used to seeing that smile, either.

Forty-five minutes later, they finish strapping the tree to the roof of the SUV they borrowed from the SHIELD civilian fleet. “Where to next?” Phil asks.

“One of those Christmas stores?” Clint suggests. “Tree needs decorations.”

“About that,” Phil replies. “I might know a place where we can get some.”

He directs them out onto the highway, and then eventually to one of those secure storage places that advertises a free first month when you sign up for a year-long rental. Phil leads them inside through two locked doors and down three hallways, and stops in front of one of the large, climate-controlled units.

Phil doesn’t look at them as he speaks, fiddling with his keychain and then the lock. “When I closed the house, I sold or donated most things, but some of it, some of it, I, uh…”

“Hey,” Clint says, gently placing a hand on Phil’s shoulder just as the lock clicks. “It’s okay.”

“Yeah,” Phil says, like he doesn’t really believe it. He heaves open the door and clicks on the interior light. The walls of the unit are lined with stacks of boxes, cardboard and plastic alike, while the center holds a few pieces of furniture - a rocking chair, a wooden desk, and what looks like the pieces of a large bed frame. Phil picks his way across the unit to the back-right corner and grabs a large Rubbermaid tub off the top of the stack. “Anyway, we don’t have to use any of this, I just thought--”

Phil sets the bin down in the hallway in front of Clint and Nat, and then pauses, just looking at them. Finally, he says, “I thought, since it’s a family Christmas, we could use the family decorations.”

“I’d like that,” Nat says. She leans forward to nudge Phil with her shoulder. “Do you have any Captain America ornaments?”

Phil shrugs in a completely unembarrassed way. “There might be one or two.”

Nat kneels and peels the lid off the top of the bin. It’s filled with tiny boxes - some white, some red with images on the front - along with a good number of fake pine cones, poinsettias, and garlands. “Got any more?”

In the end, they load three bins into the trunk of the SUV and drive back to Clint’s place.

Thankfully, one of the bins includes a tree stand, and Clint spends twenty minutes holding the tree in place while Phil fiddles with the screws and Natasha supplies helpful suggestions like, “Turn it a little to the left. No, the other left. Well, now you’re leaning too much, push it forward. Not that far. Back a little bit.”

“I think she’s trolling me,” Clint laments to Phil, who’s stretched out on the floor underneath him, getting pine needles all over his sweater.

“Just hold it still while I screw these in, and then you can go plot your revenge,” Phil replies. “Be sure to wash the tree sap off your hands first.”

“But that’s the basis of my revenge!”

The tree goes up, the base gets filled with water, the tree skirt goes around the base, Clint flops down on the couch with a groan of relief, and Phil rummages around in the first bin for a few minutes before raising a box in the air with a triumphant, “Aha!”

Phil takes the ornament out of the box - it’s a glass angel, about four inches high, and it sparkles with an iridescent sheen - and hands it to Natasha. She takes it gently.

“Go on. The kid hangs the first ornament. Family…” His voice breaks, but he manages to finish. “Family tradition.”

Natasha looks down at the angel, turning it in her hands for a few moments, then looks back over at Phil. He smiles, a little sadly. She leans up and presses a kiss to his cheek. Then she steps over to the tree and hangs the first ornament on a branch a little higher than center. “Is that alright?”

“Perfect,” Phil says with a decisive nod. He pulls the bin a little closer to the tree and starts pulling out more ornament boxes, stacking them on the floor and handing a few more over to Nat.

Clint stands quietly and steps over next to Phil. “You okay?”

Phil looks up at him and then glances over to Natasha, who’s watching them both, face full of emotion.

“I’m awesome,” Phil says.

When the tree is fully decorated and the garlands are hung, Phil goes into the kitchen to make dinner while Clint carefully vacuums the pine needles off of the tree skirt Phil’s grandmother quilted in 1963.

When he finally gets all the tree sap off his hands and goes into the kitchen, Phil and Natasha are standing side-by-side in front of the stove, leaning on each other as Phil stirs a pot. Clint steps up behind them, rests his head on Phil’s inside shoulder, and wraps an arm around each of them.

“Hey Nat,” he says, enjoying their welcome. “Next time someone says your dads are adorable, what are you gonna say back?”

Natasha, of course, snorts, and says, “I’ll tell them they mispronounced ‘insufferable.’”

“‘Atta girl,” Phil says, voice full of approval.

Clint shakes his head and reaches around Phil to grab a slice of zucchini out of the pot and pop it in his mouth. “Ahh, hot, hot!” he yelps, puffing out his cheeks and blowing to cool his mouth off.

“Completely insufferable,” Nat adds, and Phil laughs as Clint runs to the sink and drinks cold water straight from the faucet.

“It’s what you get for eating it before it’s ready,” Phil adds when Clint turns the water off.

“Nuh-uh,” Clint says. “It’s your fault for being such a good cook. Kiss it better?”

Nat shakes her head and walks away. Phil reaches for Clint’s hand and pulls him forward until their bodies are flush, and then kisses him gently. “Better?”

“Little bit. Might need four more.”

Phil obliges.

*

Friday, December 24, 2004

*

On Christmas Eve, Clint tosses half of the new throw pillows in the back of his closet, annoyed at how much money he spent on them yet utterly glad to see them go.

“You can always rotate them in and out every couple of months to keep the decor fresh,” Phil says, watching with amusement as Clint sets his apartment back to rights.

Clint shoots him a look that he’s pretty sure indicates his feelings on the matter - that it’s nuts - and Phil just smiles back peacefully. Clint can’t think of any way to respond other than to draw him in for a hug.

He can’t seem to stop touching Phil. He hopes it’s not creepy. Phil doesn’t seem to mind it. Just like every other time, Phil leans into the hug, clings just as tightly as Clint, and leaves a kiss on Clint’s cheek when he finally pulls away. It makes Clint’s face burn and his throat tighten with emotions he can’t quite corral into words yet - but it doesn’t stop him from reaching for another hug a few minutes later.

With the throw pillows rearranged and Phil settled in his new spot - between Clint and Nat, so they can each grab ahold of him, or find an easy excuse to touch him - Clint’s apartment starts to feel comfortable again.

They order massive amounts of Chinese take-out and watch _White Christmas, The Muppet Christmas Carol,_ and _Love Actually_. Clint fields calls from Lraaz, Rosita, Aaron and Meredith. Natasha spends several long minutes in Clint’s bedroom talking to Maria. Nick calls, and they put him on speaker with the phone set on the coffee table in front of them, and laugh as he grumbles about the weather in the mysterious, undisclosed, utterly-classified location he’s calling from (Albuquerque).

Phil gets calls from his mother’s best friend, both of his cousins, his mother’s pastor, and several more neighbors and friends of the family.  He looks surprised each time his phone rings, and Clint aches for him every time.

“I guess…” Phil explains at the end of the night, hesitant, like he’s trying to find the right words. “I guess with my mom gone, I thought I would be alone.”

Clint’s already holding Phil’s hand, so he gives it a tight squeeze. “You’re never gonna be alone, Phil. No matter what happens.”

“We promise,” Nat adds.

Phil nods, and Clint wonders how long it will take him to believe them.

*

Saturday, December 25, 2004

*

Clint wakes up.

There’s an insistent tapping on his shoulder forcing him awake. He opens his eyes to see Natasha standing over him, staring at him expectantly. She’d slept on the couch last night, and is still in the ridiculous reindeer pajamas Nick gave her last year. He has the feeling she’s going to wear them all day.

“Yes?” he asks when he’s rolled over out of Phil’s arms and put in his hearing aids. The clock says it’s seven a.m. Natasha is really playing up the kid-at-Christmas angle, but he can’t find it in himself to be annoyed with her.

“I want steak and eggs,” Natasha whispers. It doesn’t work, and Phil starts making slowing-waking-up movements next to Clint.  

Clint thinks about the contents of his fridge. “Do I have stuff for steak and eggs?”

“Yes.”

“Alright, I’ll make you your steak and eggs. Where are my pants?”

Nat throws him a pair of sweats. He pulls them on, wanders off to the bathroom to perform his morning ablutions, and comes back in to see Phil sitting up in bed, his eyes bleary and his hair a mess. Clint thinks he’s the most adorable thing he’s ever seen.

“What?” Phil asks when he catches Clint staring.

“You’re cute,” Clint replies honestly. He likes the way he can say his thoughts out loud, now. He like the way it makes Phil’s cheeks turn pink. “Steak and eggs?”

“Sure,” Phil agrees. Clint steps back up to the bed and kisses Phil… then kisses him again, and Phil starts to lean back, and it would be so easy to follow him back down to the mattress and--

“Coffee’s ready,” Nat calls from the kitchen, and Clint groans and pulls away.

He and Phil head into the kitchen instead of making time in the bedroom. Phil prepares their mugs while Clint starts pulling supplies out of the fridge and Natasha watches from her seat at the table. Clint turns away from the stove at one point and catches her looking at them, and it makes him concerned enough to ask, “You okay, kiddo?”

She smiles her Clint-and-Phil smile and just says, “Don’t burn my eggs.”

Clint shoots her a fake-offended look - because seriously, when has he ever failed to feed her? - and goes back to scrambling. He hears Phil chuckle at the other side of the counter, and his heart just… fills with emotions he can’t name and couldn’t begin to try.

He wants every day of his life to start like this.

When their plates are cleared and they’ve all refilled their coffee mugs, Nat stands up from the table and says, “Presents?”

The three of them move to sit on the floor in front of the tree. With the short notice since Phil came home, they’d agreed to limit their gifts for one another: they must be under ten dollars, and they must be incredibly stupid. Clint is confident in his gift choices, and hopes Nat doesn’t ping him as a cheater for going 74 cents over budget.

One by one, Natasha passes out the gifts, and one by one, they open them. Natasha obviously did her Christmas shopping at the grocery store; she gives Phil a 48-count box of Chewy granola bars, and gives Clint a half-gallon jug of Frank’s Red Hot Sauce.

Phil, equally as obviously, went to the toy store. He gives Natasha a [ pin art toy](http://amzn.to/2bZ9SGC) - which Clint is immediately, immensely jealous of and plans to steal from her at his earliest opportunity - and gives Clint an atrociously ugly Christmas-themed off-brand Beanie Baby.

“The real ones are too expensive,” Phil explains at Clint’s aghast expression. “I had to stick with the knock-off.”

“I don’t know if that makes it better or worse, darlin’,” Clint replies. It takes him a second to realize it was the pet name that made Phil blush. When he does, he resolves to continue using them at every opportunity. Phil blushing is… A sight.

Clint gives Natasha a coffee mug that says, “ _I hate Mondays_ ” in bold black lettering, and she laughs when she opens it. To Phil, he gives a flashlight with a beam shaped like the Bat Signal.

“The rules were stupid gifts. Clint, this is awesome!” Phil says as he shines the light around the room, calling for Batman on the ceiling, the far wall, the couch cushion, and the side of the tree.

“I think we can consider this a success,” Natasha says, playing with the pin art toy and making it take the shape of her hand.

“Here, check this out,” Phil says, and reaches for the toy. He flips it forward to clear out the impression of Nat’s hand, and then gently presses it on his face. His face, of course, then shows up on the other side in pin format.

Nat just _looks_ at him. “How many people do you think did that in the store before you bought this?”

“All of them,” Phil replies. “Isn’t it great?”

Nat just looks helplessly at Clint, who shrugs at her. “You asked him to watch _Twister_ with us. You have no one to blame but yourself.”

Shaking her head, Natasha takes the toy back from Phil and starts looking over the tree for a good ornament to press into the pins.

“There’s, um, one more present,” Clint says, suddenly immensely nervous. Nat and Phil turn to look at him, the former in confusion, the latter unsurprised. But then, Clint told Phil about his plan a few days ago, so. There’s that.

Clint reaches under the couch and pulls out a wrapped box, the kind that the department store gives you when you buy someone a sweater. He hands it to Natasha. “Go on, open it.”

“Is this going to be like the first ornament thing?” Nat asks, suspicion coloring her tone. She’s picked up on his nerves, and it’s making _her_ nervous.

“Yeah, little bit,” Clint replies. “It’s not, uh, it’s not a gift, really. It’s not something I’m _giving_ to you. It’s something we’d decide on _together_. I, uh, just figured I’d wrap it anyway.”

Nat peels off the paper, opens the box, and pulls out the folder he got from the family law attorney a few weeks ago. She opens it and flips through the forms -- all filled out, all signed, waiting to be filed with the court.

“What is this?” she asks, voice quiet and trembling. She flips another page.

Clint takes a deep breath and looks at her: this nineteen-year-old assassin, SHIELD agent, pilot, fighter, survivor… his friend, his partner, his unofficial daughter.

It’s time to make that last bit official.

“We joked about it, before,” he begins. “And I know you’re gonna be twenty next month, and you’ve been taking care of yourself for a long time. I’m not trying to, to say that doesn’t matter, ‘cause it does.”

He scooches closer to her, down here on the floor amid the debris of their holiday. “You don’t have to accept. It won’t change anything one way or the other. But. You’re my kid, in every way that matters to me, and I want the whole world and the state and the legal system to know that, too.”

Closing the folder, Nat puts it back into the box in her lap and stares down at it for a few moments, just processing. It’s a lot to take in, Clint knows. When he met with the lawyer for the first time and learned how easy adult adoption was, what it would mean… he had to sit and breathe for a minute, as well.

“You… want to adopt me?” Nat finally asks, looking up at him. She’s got her game face on and it’s a good one, her chin isn’t wobbling at all, but the shine in her eyes is giving the whole thing away.

“I’ve already adopted you,” Clint says. He reaches out and cups her cheek with his hand, because he can’t… he can’t _not_ touch her right now. “This just… puts it on paper. If you want. Only if you want.”

She tilts her face into his hand and sniffles a little, and god, he needs to stop making his kid cry all the time, this is like the fourth time in two months, he’s already a terrible parent.

“Yeah,” Nat whispers, and nods. “Yeah, okay.”

Clint’s stomach swoops. “Yeah?”

She nods again. “Yeah.”

“Really?” he asks, just to-- to make--

“Really.” A tear leaks out and falls down her cheek, but she’s smiling, now.

His heart is about to burst out of his chest, he can’t even-- “Really, really?”

“Yes!” Nat says, giggling now through more tears.

Clint whoops, and scoops her up into his arms to pull into his lap and hug the hell out of her. She shrieks at the sudden movement and laughs some more, even as she presses her wet cheek against his neck.

He looks up at Phil, and Phil is just… sitting there, grinning from ear to ear and crying as well, they’re all crying, all three of them sitting on the damn floor and crying. Crying happens because you’re so full of emotions that your body needs a way to physically express them, Virgina once explained to him. Clint will cry every damn day if it means feeling like this.

Clint tilts Nat backwards until she’s facing Phil upside-down, and says, “Phil Coulson, I’d like to introduce you to my daughter, Natasha.”

“Lovely to meet you, Natasha,” Phil replies, voice full of mirth. “You have a very strange father.”

“I like him,” Nat says, and at that, Clint has to draw her back in again for another hug. He reaches out for Phil’s hand, and uses his grip to pull Phil into the embrace, Natasha sandwiched between them. The three of them, crying tears of joy, sitting on the floor in front of the Christmas tree.

*

Friday, December 31, 2004

*

It’s a year divisible by four, which means they rent out a restaurant in downtown Los Angeles, and Donna, Meredith, and a few other friends come into town for New Year’s. Clint’s mostly relieved to not have to be responsible for planning any of it - he just shows up, Phil in tow, and tries not to be too awkward.

It helps that Donna isn’t wearing anything terrifying - especially not the fuck-me-stilettos of ‘97 - and is at the correct height when she hugs him. It helps that, while Meredith _is_ wearing something terrifying, she still hugs Clint hard like she always does and presses a wet smack to his cheek. Then she turns and gives Phil the same treatment, at which point Clint becomes aware that he and Phil probably now have matching bright red lipstick smears on their cheeks.

Donna shakes her head at them and dampens a napkin with a bit of her drink to help wipe it off. “She’s been doing that to people all night,” she tells them with good humor. “She thinks it’s hilarious.”

“That’s because it _is_ , Donna-bear,” Meredith replies. “Where’s my minion Natasha tonight?”

“She’s not your minion, Mer,” Clint says, only half truthfully. He’s grateful that Natasha has taken a shine to his friends, he’s glad she has the support of four aunts to call on, but the trouble she and Meredith get into when he’s not around gives him tension headaches. “She’s having a sleepover with Maria, apparently it’s a thing teenage girls do.”

He doesn’t want to think about what trouble Nat and _Maria_ are getting into right now.

“That they do,” Meredith says. “So what have you two been up to lately?”

Clint glances at Phil, who shrugs and says, “Dating.”

That gets eyebrows from both Donna and Meredith, but it’s the latter who asks, “Dating? Not just having sex and repressing your feelings?”

“No feelings are currently in repression, Agent Jones,” Phil says, smirking.

“Glad to hear that, Agent Coulson,” Meredith replies.

“Alright, that’s enough,” Donna says in her best Lraaz impression. “Phil, can you go get yourself a drink while we quiz your boyfriend on his emotional health?”

Phil chuckles, and Clint loves him to pieces. “I’ll be sure to linger over my order.”

“Get me a ginger ale?” Clint asks in an undertone.

“I’ll get two,” Phil says with a nod. He pulls away, brushing his fingers across the small of Clint’s back as he does so, and it sends a tingle up his spine.

He watches Phil walk away - because those pants are a gift from heaven - and then turns to see Meredith and Donna looking at him with twin expressions of amusement.

“I hate it when you both team up against me,” he says. “I want that added to the record. It’s unnerving.”

“We’re happy for you,” Donna says. “You’ve been alone for a long time.”

“And have dated terrible people for even longer,” Meredith adds.

“Hey,” Clint says, offended. “My taste isn’t that terrible, _Miss Jones_.”

“I don’t count, we weren’t ever dating. Need I remind you of Dustin Hoernecke?”

He groans. “Please don’t.”

“Tim Maguire?”

“Hey, Tim was a nice guy,” Clint says, actually kind of annoyed at that one. “I liked him.”

“Tim didn’t give you enough time or credit or space to work on your feelings,” Donna says. “Does Phil?”

Clint pauses, considering, and thinks about the last few weeks - that first phone call, all the subsequent phone calls, every day since Phil’s been home. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, he does.”

“Oh good,” Meredith says. “We don’t have to sic Rosita on him.”

“She already gave him her shovel talk,” Clint says.

“Was it the one where she says, ‘I have a shovel’? I love that one,” Meredith says, grinning.

“Yup.”

Meredith snorts, and Donna shakes her head. “I’m sorry I was away on a mission and missed all your personal growth,” she says. “I wish I could have been here.”

Clint shrugs in response. “It’s okay. I did okay.”

“More than okay, I hear,” Donna replies.

Clint shrugs again, still a little uncomfortable with the regard in which she’s holding him. “I had a lot to work through. I finally… got the chance to work through it, I guess.”

Donna takes his hand and squeezes it. “We’re all really proud of you.”

Clint looks down at their joined hands and thinks - fourteen years. Fourteen years of friendship. He raises his head and looks at her and Meredith, and says, “When I was seventeen, I had a son.”

To their credit, they both manage to keep most of the surprise to themselves; Meredith’s eyebrows give the game away. He’s never told them this. He’s always held that one piece back.

“I never met him,” Clint continues, looking down again. “My girlfriend gave him up to the state, and I lost all my rights. He’ll be able to find me when he turns 18, but it’s, that’s not anything I have any control over, other than to wait.”

He looks back up at them. “So yeah. That, uh, that messed me up a lot. Among other things, stuff you know. But I never told you about that. Sorry.”

Meredith recovers first and grabs him in a hug. “Aww, Clint. Our precious baby is learning how to keep secrets properly.”

She lets go to give Donna a turn. “Thank you for telling us. You know it’s okay that you didn’t before, right? You have a right to privacy.”

“Yeah, I know,” he says. “I wanted to tell you.”

“Okay, that’s enough emotions for one night,” Meredith says. “Here comes your boyfriend. I’ll give you two dollars to kiss him when he gets here.”

“I’ll do _that_ for free,” Clint says, just as Phil returns and hands him his glass of soda. He presses a quick kiss to Phil’s lips and pulls back to admire the slight blush that creeps across his cheeks.

“Everything okay?” Phil asks, after taking a moment to collect himself. “I saw intense faces for a while there.”

“Staring at your beau from across the room?” Meredith asks cheekily. “That’s creepy, Phil.”

“I’m always staring at Clint,” Phil replies easily. “Now I get to admit it.”

It’s Clint’s turn to flush at that, and it doesn’t help that Phil’s hand has snuck over to the small of Clint’s back and is stroking lightly through his shirt. The tingle up his spine is back, and he can’t quite manage to fully join the conversation for a while, he’s so distracted by it.

He and Phil haven’t done anything together other than kiss and cuddle, even those nights when Phil slept over. He’s been okay with that so far. They’ve always been free with their touches, throughout the entirety of their friendship. But now that they’re more than friends, he’s tried to ease slowly into more intimacy.

It’s not that he doesn’t want more. He’s wanted more for years. It’s just… now that he can _have_ more… It’s thrilling and scary and a thousand things all wrapped up together, but there’s no rush. He loves that there’s no rush.

Phil’s hand reaches further to Clint’s hip, pulling him tighter against Phil’s side, until they’re pressed together from knee to shoulder. Meredith smirks, catching the movement, but for once keeps her comments to herself. Then Phil’s thumb starts stroking his side, so gently, just a tiny press, and Clint no longer cares what Meredith says or doesn’t say.

They chat for a while, then make their way around the room to chat with Aaron and his wife, and a few of Phil’s friends, and get ginger ale refills at the bar.

At ten forty-five, Clint pulls Phil out of the room and into the hallway, pushes him against the wall, and leans forward, stopping just a hair’s breadth from his lips to ask, “This okay?”

“Go for it,” Phil says, and Clint dives into the kiss.

They kiss, and they kiss, and they kiss, and between that and the light touches Phil has been gracing him with all night, Clint is quickly, embarrassingly hard. He pulls back with a whine of regret and rests his forehead against Phil’s. “If I come in my pants at the New Year’s Eve party, I will never hear the end of it for the rest of my life, you know that, right? I mean, it’d be worth it, but still. The rest of my life, darlin’.”

Phil laughs quietly. “I understand. You want to get out of here?”

Clint pulls back a little more and takes in Phil - the crinkles at the corners of his eyes, the brightness of his smile, the relaxation in his shoulders. “If I tell you I love you right now, will you think I’m only saying it to get into your pants?”

Phil’s smile, impossibly, grows wider, and his eyes shine. “Only one way to find out.”

Clint rises to the challenge. “I love you, Phil.”

“Are you saying that just to get into my pants?” Phil asks archly.

Clint shakes his head. “Not in a million years.”

“Okay then,” Phil responds. “Let’s get out of here.”

*

They drive back to Clint’s apartment at a safe and sedate pace, because drivers are crazy on New Year’s even before the ball drops. By the time they get through Clint’s front door, the ardor has cooled enough for him to have somewhat of a clear head.

“We haven’t had the sex talk yet,” he says, and then winces at the completely non-sexy opening line.

Phil takes it with aplomb, leading Clint to the couch and not, thankfully the bedroom. Clint’s not ready for the bedroom just yet. “I figured we’d get there eventually. Where would you like to start?”

“Uh. I guess, uh. My um, my last STI test was two weeks ago.” He flushes. “It was after we talked. It wasn’t that I was, uh, presuming, I just wanted to make sure--”

“That was very kind of you,” Phil says, and the way he says it isn’t patronizing, not at all, it’s… Phil really thinks it was kind. He continues quietly, “I’ve had chlamydia twice, in ‘91 and ‘96. Both cases were diagnosed early and treated successfully. Nothing else since then. And they checked me for everything in the hospital in June.”

“Oh,” Clint says, and checks himself to make sure he hasn’t pulled away or stilled or done anything that even slightly smacks of rejection. Because he knows these things happen. He knows how easily it could have happened to him. “I’m sorry.”

Phil shakes his head, and raises his hand to cup Clint’s cheek in his palm - so gently - and Clint leans into it. Phil smiles a little, and softly says, “Over the years, I’ve come to learn that asking these questions, it isn’t about trust. It isn’t a value judgment about your partner. It’s about making the loving choice to keep your partner safe, and to keep yourself safe.”

Clint nods, pressing deeper into Phil’s touch. “Yeah. Yeah, okay.”

“Okay. What were your other questions?”

“Um. You know that my last partner was in July. We used a condom for everything. You?”

“A year ago, November.”

Clint blinks. He knows Phil’s dating habits, has met or known more than a few of his girlfriends - lovely women, all. He can’t remember Phil ever having a dry spell that long. As if reading his thoughts, Phil smiles wryly and shrugs a little. “After I found out about my mom’s diagnosis… Let’s just say, the well dried up. Closed for business.”

“And now you’re… ready for the grand re-opening?”

Phil bows his head and thunks his forehead against Clint’s collarbone three times. “That was awful,” he groans.

“I hope you weren’t expecting good lines from me,” Clint shoots back. “The best I’ve got is, ‘I love you, let me give you orgasms now.’”

Phil raises his head and looks at Clint. “That’ll work.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

He can’t help it. He _can’t_ help it. He’s so happy. “Really, really?”

“Clint--”

“I love you, let me give you orgasms now.”

Phil tackles him onto the couch.

They kiss, and they kiss, and they kiss, and Clint grows hard in his nice slacks, can feel Phil grow hard in _his_ nice slacks, and it’s amazing. He stops to catch his breath for a moment, remembering that it’s been a year for Phil, that it’s been _decades_ for Phil when it comes to fooling around with another man. “What do you wanna--?”

“Anything,” Phil gasps, and rocks against him, and it feels so good-- “Just, just you.”

He has every intention of moving to the bedroom, where there are condoms and lube and fresh sheets (he was hopeful). But when he pulls away, and they both lose their shirts to each others’ reaching hands, he gets distracted by the expanse of Phil’s chest.

He’s seen Phil shirtless before. He’s even touched some of that bare skin. But not with intent, with welcome intent, with a _goal_ at the end.

He gets to do that, now.

Holy shit.

Clint levers himself upright, and Phil makes a noise, watching his abs contract, that goes straight to his hindbrain. Clint kisses him hard, going deep and then easing back, sucking on Phil’s lower lip and pulling it tight, letting it out slowly, listening to every hitch of Phil’s breath.

He pushes Phil back, until he’s lying on the couch beneath him, breathing heavily, a red flush stretching across his chest. Clint kneels between Phil’s legs, which immediately wrap around his waist and pull their bodies tight together. God, they still have their shoes on, but Clint _just doesn’t care_.

He dives back down, tastes the skin at the juncture of Phil’s neck and jaw, kissing and nibbling and licking while Phil gasps and twitches and clutches at the muscles of his back. His lips travel down, down his neck and across his collarbone and down his sternum, sucking and biting and tasting. When he reaches a nipple and drags his tongue across it -- ever so lightly -- Phil’s back bows, and his hips jerk against Clint’s. Clint’s body responds, grinding down, and soon they fall into a pushing-pulling rhythm, rubbing against each other, finding pleasure in each other.

Clint spends some time on Phil’s nipple, then shifts to give the other one equal attention. His breath is getting faster and faster, matching Phil’s every inhale and exhale. He raises his head again to kiss Phil’s mouth, braces his arms on the cushion behind Phil’s head to keep most of the weight of his upper body off of him.

“No, c’mere, want you on me,” Phil pants. His eyes are glazed and half-shut, but his arms are strong when he pulls Clint’s body down, blanketing him from shoulder to hip. Clint hitches himself forward a few more inches, and Phil’s hips tilt up to follow, wrapping more tightly around Clint’s waist, lining up their cocks through the soft fabric. “Fuck. Clint. Yes.”

He wraps his arms around Phil’s shoulders and squeezes. He’s on top of Phil, wrapped around him, foreheads pressed together, and he hopes that his touch and his body and his eyes tell Phil that he’s safe, that he’s cherished, that he’s accepted, that he’s _wanted._ That Clint wants him more than anything else in his entire life and can’t imagine ever, _ever_ saying no to this.

His hips speed up, and he adds a sharp hitch at the end of each thrust that has Phil squeezing his eyes shut and chanting, “Clint, Clint, Clint, oh shit, oh, oh,” and Clint turns his head to scrape his teeth across Phil’s ear, and then Phil is _gone._ He groans low, head falling back, mouth open wide, and stills.

Clint stills with him, cock still perfectly, pleasantly, magnificently hard against Phil’s body. Phil takes a second or ten to just check out of existence. Then - head still back, eyes still closed - he pulls his hips even further forward, thighs now nearly tucked into Clint’s armpits, and urges, “Come on, come on, your turn.”

Clint makes a tentative thrust, and realizes that the change in angle means he isn’t rubbing against Phil’s cock anymore, but further back, against his balls and the cleft of his ass.

“ _Shit_ ,” Clint breathes, and the sensation and the knowledge and the image in his head, and Phil laughs - how the _fuck_ did Phil retain these skills after twenty-five years? He thrusts again, harder this time, and when Phil makes an appreciative noise in the back of his throat, he picks their rhythm back up, and doesn’t stop until a few short minutes later, when he shakes and shakes through his orgasm and then looks down to see Phil, clear-eyed, satisfied, smiling up at him.

“Hey,” Clint says, smiling back. He braces his weight on his palms again and lifts himself off of Phil’s chest, then pulls back to kneel between his legs. Phil shifts back a little bit, pulls his right leg out from between Clint’s body and the back of the couch, then sits up.

Phil raises his left hand in the air and looks at Clint, eyebrows slightly quirked.

Clint looks from his face, to his hand, and back to his face. “Are you… high-fiving me?”

Phil responds by wiggling his fingers expectantly. Shaking his head, Clint gives in, slapping Phil’s palm with his. “You are a giant nerd.”

“But you love me,” Phil replies.

“You bet I do.”

They finally make it out of their clothes and into bed. Midnight has long since passed. When Clint has taken out his aids and turned off the lamps, there’s just enough light coming in from the window for him to see Phil sign, “Happy New Year.”

Clint signs it back, and adds another sign at the end - middle and ring fingers pressed to the palm, other three fingers outstretched. Then he crawls into bed, wraps himself around Phil again, and falls asleep.

*

Monday, January 3, 2005

*

Clint’s medical leave ends.

Part of him is excited to get back into the game; he’s good at what he does, he loves the people he works with, and he likes that he’s making a difference in the world.

The rest of him is all nerves. He’s been out for more than three months, a large chunk of which was spent on inactivity and not eating, so it’s going to take a lot of hours of training and range time to get him ready to actually re-enter the field. He’s going to have back-to-back security briefings to get caught up on what’s been going on in the rest of the world.

And, you know, he’s sleeping with one member of his team and trying to adopt the other one. That… might get awkward.

SHIELD at least, doesn’t care about that last part; as a three-part team, none of them hold any kind of authority over the others. They all answer to agents higher up in the SHIELD echelon. Phil could no more order him to perform sexual favors than Clint could command Nick to order him a pizza.

(Phil has, of course, made _requests_ the past couple of days. Clint’s been more than happy to comply.)

(Clint has also, in the past, made Nick bring him food. The metaphor might be getting away from him. But the point still stands, really).

The thing is, though, that Clint is allowed to touch Phil, now. To kiss him. To take his hand. Maybe not in the hallways on base, but certainly on the street and in their homes.

Ten minutes into a briefing with Agent Blake to discuss the June mission - because this is the first time all three of them have been on base together since, and the mechanics _still_ haven’t found the reason for the crash - Clint realizes that he’s relaxed.

Natasha is seated on his left, answering questions clearly and competently about their escape from the woods. She’s coming over later tonight to watch _Pirates of the Caribbean_.

Phil is on his right. There’s a hickey on his neck, hidden by the collar of his shirt.

It feels normal. Even more than it used to, because he’s not carrying around that tension between his shoulder blades, wondering what he means to them and wanting more from them both. Wanting different things, but still more, and trying not to let himself reach for it.

He’s got more, now.

He’s good.

*

Thursday, January 13, 2005

*

They don’t meet in the courtroom. That’s the part that surprises Clint the most, that he’d been bracing himself for. Instead, they’re led into Judge Garcia’s chambers - an office dominated by a large desk, faced by a handful of visitors’ chairs. Even in the more informal setting, Clint can’t help but be nervous. What if she says no, says their relationship isn’t real, rejects the petition?

He takes a deep breath as he sits in his chair and remembers Virginia’s advice: Look for the evidence.

Fact: Nat is his.

Fact: Nat is his, no matter what happens here today.

Fact: His lawyer - the best family practice attorney he could afford - has repeatedly assured him that the hearing is just a formality, a chance to sign some official papers and answer softball questions from the judge. The judge isn’t going to reject the petition.

Conclusion: It’s gonna be fine.

Clint spares a quick glance behind him, where Phil, Nick and Maria are standing, waiting to celebrate with them when this is all over. Phil shoots him a soft smile and a reassuring nod, and Clint relaxes a little bit further.

Judge Garcia is all business. She swears them in, looks over the petition, confirms the details:

Clinton Francis Barton, born June 18, 1971 in Waverly, Iowa. 1993 graduate of Culver University. Gainfully employed at Blue Star Security Solutions for 12 years. Clint nods and smiles as he listens to his civilian alias - it’s not like he can really tell them he’s a SHIELD agent who regularly traverses the globe spying on things and shooting arrows at other things, can he?

Natasha’s details involve a little more… creative license. Technically she’s still on the run from the KGB, who they really don’t want showing up out of the blue at her favorite bagel shop. So she’s Natasha Resnik, born January 13, 1985 in Los Angeles, California to Ukrainian immigrants.

SHIELD’s background-creation specialists are good. They’ve got official records of Natasha Resnik’s birth, the death certificates of her parents that same year, her entry into the foster system.

“You applied for emancipation at the age of fifteen?” the judge asks.

Natasha nods, and Clint knows that, false or not, this legend skirts as closely to the truth as they can make it. “I was accepted into college. I figured that would simplify matters, so that I wouldn’t have to vet my life decisions with anyone else.”

Judge Garcia nods, and asks, “How did your relationship with Mr. Barton come about?”

“Clint was there for me,” Nat answers, and Clint resists the urge to take her hand. “He helped me out of a bad situation I was in and got me into school, and a support network. He didn’t have to. But he made a home for me when I didn’t have one. He’s…”

She looks over at him, then, and his throat tightens at the expression on her face. His eyes well up when she finishes, “He’s my dad.”

“Mr. Barton?” the judge asks after a moment, pulling his attention away.

“Yeah, I mean, yes, Judge?”

“You understand that this is a permanent, lifelong commitment?” she asks, and that’s when Clint knows he’s won.

“I’m counting on it,” he says, voice full of confidence, and winks at Nat.

She smiles her Clint-is-ridiculous smile even as the judge says, “Alright. I see no reason why the adoption should not be granted. Natasha, have a very happy birthday. Congratulations, Barton Family.”

Someone behind them lets out a whoop, and then Clint has Natasha in his arms, someone else is hugging them both, more arms are around him but all he sees is Natasha’s smile - a little blurry, because of course, he’s crying again. He’s okay with that.

Clint leaves the judge’s chambers with Natasha Barton tucked up under his arm, with Phil’s arm around his shoulders, Nick and Maria following closely.

“Ready for your fancy celebratory dinner, birthday girl?” he asks once they’re out of the building and heading to the cars.

“I thought you didn’t know when your birthday was,” Maria says.

“I didn’t,” Nat replies. “I only ever knew the year. Individualism was frowned upon where I grew up.”

“Then why today? Just a random part of the cover?”

It’s Phil who answers. “January 13th was the day she and Clint met.”

“Oh my god,” Maria says. “That is the cutest fucking thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Cute enough to make even you weepy?” Phil asks. Maria’s stoicism is legendary.

“Not even close. But it’s a good try.”

“Come on, you ingrates,” Nick says, steering them all across the parking lot. “I have reservations for us downtown. I’m paying.”

“ _You’re_ paying?” Phil asks.

“Shut up, Coulson. Only Natasha can order the lobster.”

“I’ll share,” Nat says in his ear, conspiracy-like.

Clint hugs her one more time, and they get in the car.

*

Monday, February 14, 2005

*

Clint gets the text message from Phil just as he’s finishing up work for the day. _Hey... are you busy?_

_not really what’s up?_

_Can you come and get me?_ , Phil asks, and Clint’s stomach starts to clench.

_sure. everything ok?_

Phil’s response is the address of a bar a few blocks from Union Station. Clint immediately clicks save on his current work, gets up, grabs his bag, and heads for the door. Phil hasn’t had a drink since June, is on medication that’s supposed to stop alcohol cravings, has been in therapy and working on all of the underlying issues that led him to start drinking… What the hell is he doing asking for a pickup from a bar?

Half an hour later, Clint walks into the hole-in-the-wall pub and scans the room. Phil’s down at the far end of the bar, staring down into a half-empty pint of something amber-colored and probably alcoholic.

Shit.

Clint waves the bartender over to the close end of the bar and gestures at Phil. “How much has he had?” he asks.

The man frowns a little. “Been here an hour, had just the one beer. Can I get you anything?”

“No, thanks,” Clint says, relaxing a bit at the news, and hands him a ten-dollar-bill. “You can close out his tab, though, I’ll take him home.”

The bartender shrugs and takes the bill. From the looks of it, Clint just gave him a fifty percent tip - but the bar is quiet, and it doesn’t look like anyone’s harassed Phil for the hour he’s been here nursing his pint, so Clint figures he’s earned it.

He heads down to the other end of the bar, passing the three or four other patrons to where Phil is sitting quietly, empty seats on either side of him.

“Hey, handsome,” he says, sitting down on Phil’s left. “Come here often?”

The corner of Phil’s mouth quirks, and he snorts. He also doesn’t look up from his glass. “Not lately. Sorry for dragging you out here. Didn’t want to be alone anymore.”

“Not a problem,” Clint replies, nudging him a little with his shoulder. “You can always call me. No matter what. I’ll always come get you.”

Phil raises the glass to his lips, then puts it down again without taking a drink. Clint gets the distinct impression he’s made that same gesture a lot this afternoon; the beer has lost all its carbonation and barely clings to the side of the glass.

Phil sighs deeply, and then begins to talk. “I came here… I came here because I wanted a drink. But I’m still taking the naltrexone, so it didn’t… it didn’t do anything. It didn’t make me feel any better.”

He raises the glass again, and this time takes a small sip. He swallows, and frowns at the taste, or at the warmth, or even at himself, maybe. “I didn’t feel any better, and I realized that I never felt any better before, either. When I was drinking my feelings away. They just came back, afterward. It didn’t fix anything.”

“And then I realized I had fallen back into unhealthy coping mechanisms,” Phil continues, a bit more wryly. He finally looks up at Clint. “So I reached out to you. The way I should have done a year ago.”

“It doesn’t matter what happened a year ago,” Clint says, and he puts his hand on Phil’s near shoulder, trying to give a little bit of comfort. “I mean, it does. It’s a part of your life. But. You reached out today. That’s what’s important. It was hard, but you did it.”

Beneath his hand, Phil’s shoulder does a little shrug, like he doesn’t quite believe it. Clint continues, “I’m proud of you, Phil. I’m really, really proud of you.”

Phil nods a little bit, and leans into Clint. Clint takes that as permission to wrap his arm fully around Phil’s shoulders and draw him close. Phil tucks his head into the corner of Clint’s neck and just… breathes for a minute. Clint waits patiently.

When he’s pulled himself back together a little bit, Phil draws back enough that his voice won’t be muffled by Clint’s sweatshirt, and begins, “It’s Valentine’s Day today.”

Clint nods. He celebrated it once, a long time ago, with Jackie. “Yeah.”

“After my dad died,” Phil says, “my mom and I took the holiday for ourselves. We had a standing date. It was… it was our thing. Sometimes I had to miss it, because of work. A lot of times, I had to miss it.”

He takes a deep breath, and lets it out slowly. “This is the first one she’s missed.”

“That sucks,” Clint manages to say. What else is there to say? Bereavement sucks, and Phil’s still in the first year of processing it, no matter how long he’d known it was going to happen. Days like this… there are going to be a lot of days like this.

Phil snorts. “Yeah. It totally does.”

“C’mon,” Clint says. “Let’s get out of here. Go to a movie or something. Get your mind off it for a little while.”

“You realize the only remotely interesting movie in theaters right now is the sequel to Mulan, right?”

“So we’ll go see Mulan be awesome, then.”

Phil considers the last few inches of beer left in his glass, and then gently pushes it away and stands. “Okay. Okay. Let’s do that.”

Clint brushes a quick kiss to Phil’s temple, and leads him out of the bar.

*

Monday, March 21, 2005

*

Natasha doesn’t talk about personal things, not really. Maybe she’s naturally reticent; maybe it’s a byproduct of the Red Room training, something she’s working on but hasn’t quite gotten the hang of yet. She nerds out over her books and movies, lets little details slip in amidst the discussions. And, of course, she’s quite happy to provide her opinion of _Clint’s_ personal life. But it’s a rare thing for her to open up about her own.

So Clint does his best to reel in his shock when the two of them are bunked down in a tent somewhere in Appalachia, waiting for Phil to show up in the morning with a quinjet and breakfast in a food warmer, and Nat says, “Jelimo and I broke up.”

“I thought you guys said you weren’t a thing,” Clint replies, setting his book aside as nonchalantly as he can (which isn’t very).

Nat shrugs. “Maybe.”

“Why’d you break up?”

“Because of sex,” she replies, and the way she says it, the flatness of her voice, has his heart rate skyrocketing and all his muscles tensing. She catches it, obviously she does, and clarifies, “It’s not like that. Not really.”

“Okay,” he says. “What was it like, then?”

She’s quiet for a long time. “Do you remember when you found me, the kind of mission I was on?”

“Yeah, Nat. I remember.”

“Before SHIELD, I went on a lot of those missions. I know how to seduce someone, how to take them to bed, how to make them do what I want,” she says quietly. “I liked Jelimo. A lot. And it was reciprocated. But I didn’t… .”

“Some people don’t,” Clint says, thinking of Donna and her commitment to cuddle-only partners.

“I know. But I can’t tell if I don’t want because I don’t want, or if maybe I _do_ want and I’m afraid I’ll slip into seduction mode and it won’t be genuine, or if maybe my fear of getting hurt is eclipsing every other feeling, and if I wasn’t afraid, I would feel it.”

“Did you explain this to Jelimo?”

“Dad, I can barely explain this to _you_ ,” Nat says. She flops over onto her sleeping bag and looks up at him, like maybe he is the one person who holds all the answers. He’s not. He doesn’t. Shit, Dad-ing is _hard_.

He flops over on his own side of the tent, mirroring her position. “That sucks,” he says.

She snorts. “Your assessment of the situation is eloquent as always.”

“Gets the job done,” he says. “You know what else I’m gonna say, right?”

“That it’s okay to be upset, that my feelings are valid, and that I should call Linda to set up an appointment, because there’s nothing like a good therapy session to set your mind right?” She says smartly, rolling her eyes.

“It’s like you know me,” he replies, smiling a little, and she grins back.

The smile fades, and she bites her lip again and lets out a sigh. “I _liked_ Jelimo.”

Clint reaches across the space between them and takes Nat’s hand. “I know, kiddo. I know. Tell me about it?”

They stay up till two talking about Jelimo’s cheekbones, about wanting to make them happy, about sending mixed signals and subsuming desires under the pressure to behave like a normal person. To fulfil someone else’s expectations. Jelimo just… doesn’t get that.

When Phil arrives in the ‘jet at dawn with breakfast burritos and coffee, they’re overtired and grungy. He hugs each of them gently - Nat’s is extra-long - and shoos them into the back of the plane for the ride back to LA.

“Everything alright?” Phil asks, once Natasha has passed out on the bench seat between them.

“Parenting is hard,” Clint replies, shaking his head. “Nat can tell you the details when we get home.”

Phil nods and shoots him his Clint Smile. They link hands and rest them on Nat’s side for the rest of the flight.

*

Thursday, April 28, 2005

*

They plan ahead, this time.

They rent a variety of movies from Blockbuster - not sure what kind of movie mood Phil will be in at any given moment. Clint fills his fridge with four varieties of Jones Soda, and re-stocks the snack cupboard.

They both take the day off and spend most, but not all, of it on the couch. For lunch, they walk down the block to the taco stand and fill up on carnitas. For dinner, Phil makes ham and potato au gratin - his mom’s recipe, and her favorite go-to for comfort food. Then they’re tucked back into the couch, cuddled under a blanket, and Phil just… breathes.

“Remember how I used to fall asleep on your couch, last year?” Phil asks during a lull in the movie.

“And then leave a post-it note for me to find in the morning?” Clint asks. “Yeah.”

“This is a lot better than that.”

“I’m glad,” Clint says.

“I wish… I wish I had talked to you sooner. That I could have had this,” he tightens his arm around Clint’s waist for a moment, “during the bad parts. Then maybe the detox and the fight and everything after that wouldn’t have happened.”

He runs his hand up and down Phil’s back. “It’s okay that you were upset about your mom. It’s okay that you’re still upset. It’s okay to be sad. You might be sad about this for a long time.”

“Let me guess,” Phil says, turning his face to look at Clint. “That’s okay, too?”

Clint smiles at him softly. “Yup!”

Phil tucks his head back into Clint’s shoulder. “Love you.”

“Love you, too.”

*

They’re in bed now, cuddled up facing each other in the middle of the bed, but Clint hasn’t taken out his aids or turned out the lights, yet. He has a feeling Phil might have more to say tonight, and he’s proven right when Phil asks, “Did you ever stop missing your mom?”

Clint’s mom died in 1978. He was seven years old.

“No,” he says. “I didn’t. But… it’s different when it happens when you’re a kid. You don’t-- you don’t know what it means, at first. And then when it sinks in, it’s-- your whole worldview gets built around that loss. You live your whole life with this hole. So it’s more than just a person that you can’t stop missing, it’s-- it’s everything that goes along with it.”

Phil nods, just a little. “I felt that way when my dad died.”

“When you were ten?”

“Yeah. I guess I was lucky to have my mom, at least, for as long as I did.”

“Hey, no-- I didn’t mean to mean that, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to compare. Forty-four is young to lose your mom, by anyone’s standards. It’s okay to feel how you feel, for as long as you feel it.”

“I know,” Phil says, and then he sighs. “I just…. I hate it. Feeling like this.”

“It’ll get better. I know that sounds like some awful platitude, and it’s true that some days you’ll still feel pretty awful, but you’ll start having more good days, too,” Clint says, thinking of last fall. Days he’d spend coloring with Natasha and basking in her presence. Other days when moving from the bed to the couch was about all he could manage. Laughing with Rosita and Meredith. Sending Nick’s calls to voicemail.

“You promise?” Phil asks in a quiet voice, looking at him through damp lashes.

Clint feels a tightness in his throat, knowing that Phil’s been going through those same ups and downs, trying to hold onto the knowledge that yes, this is a down. There _will_ be an up coming along soon. It might even hang around for a while.

But April 28th is always going to suck.

“I promise,” he says back. Phil closes his eyes and nods.

When he stands a little while later to get the lights, he asks, “You got a call scheduled with Andrew tomorrow?”

Phil grunts. “Yeah, it’s all set.”

“Yay planning ahead,” Clint cheers quietly. “Go us.”

*

Sunday, June 19, 2005

*

The first Father’s Day after Clint adopts Natasha, she presents him with a wrapped box containing a tie, and says, “I’m not sure I’m doing this right.”

Clint hasn’t worn a tie since Donna’s sister’s wedding, but he takes this one out of the box gently and says, “You’re doing great. This is perfect.”

Because he did not think this was possible. He did not think that he would ever, truly celebrate Father’s Day. For sixteen years, he watched the day pass by with a pang. He’d bite his lip and go about his business and try not to think about it.

And now here’s Natasha, presenting him with a strip of purple silk and looking at him the way she always does when they’re not at SHIELD, when Strike Team Delta goes away and it’s just the Barton-Coulson-Romanov family unit.

It’s not that she’s a replacement for what he had before and lost, because she’s her own person who came to him her own way. It’s that she’s his, and he’s hers, through and through.

He reels her in and presses a kiss to the top of her head, and thinks that there isn’t a single solitary thing about his life that he would change.

*

They spend the summer and fall bouncing between missions and movie nights. They watch the _Fantastic Four, The Island, Serenity, Legend of Zorro_ , and _Goblet of Fire_. They travel to Nome, Invercargill, Wadi Musa, and Gander.

They get into zero additional plane crashes - not that that stops Phil and Natasha from teasing Clint mercilessly every time he gets in the pilot seat.

They celebrate Thanksgiving together, with Donna joining in because it’s her turn. Phil and Clint spend their first anniversary in a van doing surveillance and it’s boring as hell, and there’s nowhere Clint would rather be.

They spend Christmas in an undisclosed location out of the country and throw movie quotes at each other at every opportunity.

And it’s good.

*

Tuesday, February 14, 2006

*

Phil takes Natasha on the traditional Valentine’s day dinner, like he and his mom used to do. “Family traditions are important,” he explains, when he brings it up at dinner the day before. “I’d like to keep this one going, if that’s okay.”

“You don’t want to do something romantic with Clint?” Nat asks.

“We already did something romantic today,” Clint reassures her, with the faintest of evil grins. “This morning he very romantically woke me up with a--”

“Yes, I’ll go to dinner,” Nat cuts in. She is the biggest fan of their relationship, but even she has limits. “So long as Clint stays home.”

Clint grins. “I have a standing phone date with Donna, the anti-Valentine. You guys have fun.”

*

Friday, April 28. 2006

*

They follow the same plan as last year. Movies from Blockbuster. Jones sodas. Fully-stocked snack cupboard. Tacos.

“I’m afraid I’m going to feel this way my whole life,” Phil says, tucked in next to Clint on the couch.

Clint rubs his arm where it rests on his knee. “I know, darlin’.”

“Do you still miss your mom?”

Clint looks over at the photo of his parents and sighs. “Yeah. But every year, it changes.”

“Yeah,” Phil sighs back. “It’s different this year. Not better. But different.”

Phil goes to bed early. He’ll perk up in the morning, Clint knows. It’s just a matter of getting through the day, not letting it following you into the next day, and the next. Clint’s been off his own antidepressant for almost a year now - once he figured out how to change his thinking and improve his headspace, his moods followed suit. He knows Phil is still on his, though he’s gone off the naltrexone, been able to have a beer or two without spiraling down that hole. Everyone needs something different, Clint knows.

He putters around the apartment, putting snack bags and soda bottles in the kitchen and tossing the throw pillows back on the couch. He stops at his bookshelf and picks up the photo of his parents, looking at it for a little while.

Seeing his dad’s face doesn’t shoot a bolt of terror through his stomach anymore. He just feels sad and regretful, which he supposes is better than hypervigilance. His dad can’t hurt him anymore, not himself and not through other people - and, for the most part, not through the reactions he planted in Clint’s brain.

He kisses the glass over his mom’s face, puts it back in its spot on the shelf, and goes to join Phil in bed.

*

Saturday, June 18, 2006

*

Phil meets Natasha at the door, and gives her a kiss on the crown before grabbing his keys from the dish on the sideboard. “Have a good day, you two.”

“Actually,” Natasha says, grabbing his wrist so that he can’t exit the apartment and leave them to their own devices. Nat glances at Clint, then shifts back to Phil, keeping eye contact as she says, “I’d like it if you stayed.”

Clint and Nat have spent the past year and a half trying to convince Phil that he belongs with them, that he’s theirs, that they are family. Ninety-nine percent of the time, they seem to manage it. But the fact of the matter is, it’s Clint’s name on the top of Nat’s adoption papers, not Phil’s.

Maybe Phil’s just trying to respect that when he makes himself distant some days. Or maybe - just like Nat - he won’t _really_ believe his place with them is secure until his name is on those papers, too. But the California courts won’t recognize a gay marriage from Netherlands or Canada, much less a civil union in Vermont. Until the day comes where Clint and Phil can walk into a courtroom and be recognized, they’re not going to be able to make that final change in the paperwork.

Someday, Clint knows. Someday.

Today, though, Natasha is the one who says, “It’s Father’s Day. You should be here.”

Phil stares at her for a long moment, eyes wide. Then he swallows, and says, “I don’t want to impose.”

“You think you can lecture me about eating vegetables and then get out of Father’s Day activities?” she asks with a raised eyebrow. “Come on, Phil, be reasonable.”

Clint grins, and Phil turns to look at him, mouth opening to no doubt ask another silly question. Clint cuts him off with, “If you _really_ don’t want to stay, that’s okay. But I’ll bet you ten bucks Nat has a present for you in that bag of hers.”

Phil glances at Nat’s bag and then shakes his head. “No bet.”

Nat shifts her grip so that she’s holding Phil’s hand rather than his wrist, and says, “Good. I have brunch reservations at the Santa Monica pier. Let’s go.”

Nat’s presents turn out to be matching ties. Phil’s is silver with tiny blue arrows. Clint’s is blue with silver arrows. He laughs for a good solid minute when he realizes, and then he and Phil engulf Nat in a hug that lasts until she starts poking them with the salad fork.

*

Saturday, July 29, 2006

*

“When’s Nat supposed to get here?” Phil asks, pressing kisses at the back of Clint’s neck as he’s standing at their kitchen counter, elbow-deep in cookie dough. He’d had a craving, and now there is egg in his hair, dough all over his hands and wrists, and probably a few floury hand prints on his ass, because Phil thought it was hilarious.

“Soon enough that we don’t have time to get cleaned up, have sex, and get cleaned up again,” he replies regretfully.

“I could blow you while you’re baking,” Phil suggests, still nibbling the spot where neck and shoulder meet. It makes Clint’s skin tingle.

“No dice,” he manages to respond after a moment. “You’d definitely end up with dough in your hair. And probably burnt cookies.”

“I could live with that,” Phil replies, and Clint elbows him. Phil responds by resting his chin on Clint’s shoulder and loosely wrapping his arms around Clint’s waist. “But if you insist, I’ll wait until after the movie.”

“I appreciate that,” Clint says in as serious a tone as he can muster. “You can just sit there all hot and bothered while we watch _Narnia_.”

Phil hums, and then just hangs out for a few minutes while Clint scoops the dough out of the bowl and starts kneading it on the floured counter top. Eventually he says, “I love it when you’re all domestic.”

“You love me all the time,” Clint replies easily, and tilts his head back for a kiss.

Phil obliges him, and then says, “Yes, I do.”

Clint’s phone, resting on the counter, takes that opportunity to start buzzing and flashing with an incoming call. Clint frowns down at his sticky hands and says, “Can you get that? It’s probably Nat calling to tell us she’s running late.”

“If she’s running late, then I definitely have time to blow you,” Phil replies, still standing at Clint’s back.

“Answer the phone, sex monster.”

Phil laughs and, still chuckling, picks up the handset and says. primly, “Clint Barton’s phone, how may I direct your call?”

Clint rolls his eyes. When he looks back up after a moment, Phil’s face holds the same look - happy, sad, amazed, _everything_ \- as it did the first time Clint told him he loved him. What could possibly get him to make that same face now?

“Who is it?” Clint asks.

“Just a second,” Phil tells the mystery person on the other end of the line. He looks at Clint, just for a moment, and then holds the phone out to him.

“It’s your son," he says. "It’s Bailey.”

There’s a crashing noise; Clint distantly realizes it’s the sound of the mixing bowl hitting the floor, but he doesn't care.

A thousand images flash through his mind. Jackie, eight months pregnant in their trailer. Waking up alone in the hospital with nothing. The long days and months and years of wondering where they were, of searching and searching, of Jackie - fully grown and radiant - finally telling him to stop, of losing hope of ever finding his family again.

...and then crawling out of that pit to see Natasha standing there waiting for him, with Nick and with Phil. With Donna and Meredith. With Rosita and Lraaz. Family he chose, who he would choose every time, over and over again.

He looks at Phil, whose hopeful expression is slowing being replaced with a look of concern.

"Clint?"

He has so many people in his life who he loves. And he has a daughter in Natasha, and a partner in Phil. He never thought he'd have what he has now.

And now? Maybe he gets more. Maybe he gets... everything.

Clint reaches out, and takes the phone.

*

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Before you kill me - there _is_ a sequel. If you're wondering things like:
> 
> \- What happened to Barney and Jackie when they thought Clint was dead?
> 
> \- What happened when Bailey was born?
> 
> \- What happened to Barney after leaving Clint at the hospital?
> 
> \- And for that matter, why hasn't Barney tracked Clint down sometime in the past 18 years?
> 
> Then please proceed to click that Next Work button and read "Under Pressure." It is a WIP with one chapter left to go. 
> 
> Follow the [#ukoud tag on my tumblr](http://bit.ly/2c59Ei8) for updates on what's happening next in this universe. [Click here to read the Landslide Reference Guide](http://bit.ly/2gXHF6b), which is full of random facts, comments, and behind-the-scenes meta.
> 
> Thank you for sticking with me on this. It's been a wild ride, and here we are at the end. Holy shit. Thank you to [Laura Kaye](https://archiveofourown.org/users/laurakaye/pseuds/Laura%20Kaye) and [Westgate](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Harkpad/pseuds/Westgate) for the support, brainstorming, cheerleading, and screaming text messages in all capital letters. Y'all are the best.


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